THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 


BY     ARNOLD      BENNETT 


NOVELS 

THE  OLD  WIVES'  TALE 

HELEN  WITH  THE  HIGH  HAND 

THE  MATADOR  OF  THE  FIVE  TOWNS 

T^E  BOOK  OF  CARLOTTA 

BURIED  ALIVE 

A  GREAT  MAN 

LEONORA 

WHOM  Goo  HATH  JOINED 

A  MAN  FROM  THE  NORTH 

ANNA  OF  THE  FIVE  TOWNS 

THE  GLIMPSE 

POCKET  PHILOSOPHIES 

How  TO  LIVE  ON  24  HOURS  A  DAY 
THE  HUMAN  MACHINE 
LITERARY  TASTE 
MENTAL  EFFICIENCY 

PLAY* 

LUPID  AND  COMMONSBNSE 
WHAT  THE   PUBLIC  WANTS 
POLITE  FARCES 
MILESTONES 
THE  HONEYMOON 

MISCELLANEOUS 

THE  TRUTH  ABOWT  AN  AUTHOR 
THE  FEAST  OF  ST.  FRIEND 


GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


THE      POCKET      BOOKS 

THE  TRUTH  ABOUT 
AN  AUTHOR 

NEW     EDITION     WITH     PREFACE 

By    ARNOLD    BENNETT 

Author  of  "  How  to  Live  on  24  Hours  a  Day," 
"The  Old  Wives'  Tale,"  etc. 

t 

GEORGE    H.   DORAN    COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 

Copyright,  19 it 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


College 
Library 


PREFACE  TO  THE  NEW  EDITION 

Sometime  in  the  last  century  I  was  for  several 
years  one  of  the  most  regular  contributors  to 
"  The  Academy,"  under  the  editorship  of  Mr. 
Lewis  Hind  and  the  ownership  of  Mr.  Morgan 
Richards.  The  work  was  constant;  but  the  pay 
was  bad,  as  it  too  often  is  where  a  paper  has 
ideals.  I  well  remember  the  day  when,  by  dint 
of  amicable  menaces,  I  got  the  rate  raised  in  my 
favor  from  ten  to  fifteen  shillings  a  column,  with 
a  minimum  of  two  guineas  an  article  for  expos- 
ing the  fatuity  of  popular  idols.  One  evening  I 
met  Mr.  Lewis  Hind  at  the  first  performance  of 
some  very  important  play,  whose  name  I  forget, 
in  the  stalls  of  some  theatre  whose  name  I  for- 
get. (However,  the  theatre  has  since  been  de- 
molished.) We  began  to  talk  about  the  "  Acad- 
emy, and  as  I  was  An  editor  myself,  I  felt  jus- 
tified in  offering  a  little  advice  to  a  fellow-crea- 
ture. "  What  you  want  in  the  '  Academy/ "  I 
said,  "  is  a  sensational  serial."  "  Yes,  I  know," 
he  replied,  with  that  careful  laziness  of  tone 
which  used  to  mark  his  more  profound  utter- 
ances, "  and  I  should  like  you  to  write  your  liter- 

i 


PREFACE 

ary  autobiography  for  us ! "  In  this  singular 
manner  was  the  notion  of  the  following  book 
first  presented  to  me.  It  was  not  in  the  least  my 
own  notion. 

I  "began  to  write  the  opening  chapters  imme- 
diately, for  I  was  fascinated  by  this  opportunity 
to  tell  the  truth  about  the  literary  life,  and  my 
impatience  would  not  wait.  I  had  been  earning 
a  living  by  my  pen  for  a  number  of  years,  and 
my  experience  of  the  business  did  not  at  all  cor- 
respond with  anything  that  I  had  ever  read  in 
print  about  the  literary  life,  whether  optimistic 
or  pessimistic.  I  took  a  malicious  and  frigid 
pleasure,  as  I  always  do,  in  setting  down  facts 
which  are  opposed  to  accepted  sentimental  falsi- 
ties; and  certainly  I  did  not  spare  myself.  It 
did  not  occur  to  me,  even  in  the  midst  of  my 
immense  conceit,  to  spare  myself.  But  even  had 
I  been  tempted  to  spare  myself  I  should  not 
have  done  so,  because  there  is  no  surer  way  of 
damping  the  reader's  interest  than  to  spare  one- 
self in  a  recital  which  concerns  oneself. 

The  sensational  serial  ran  in  "  The  Academy  " 
for  about  three  months,  but  I  had  written  it  all 
in  the  spare  hours  of  a  very  much  shorter  period 
than  that.  It  was  issued  anonymously,  partly 

ii 


PREFACE 

from  discretion,  and  partly  in  the  hope  that  the 
London  world  of  letters  would  indulge  in  con- 
jecture as  to  its  authorship,  which  in  theory  was 
to  be  kept  a  dark  secret.  The  London  world  of 
letters,  however,  did  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Everybody  who  had  any  interest  in  such  a  mat- 
ter seemed  to  know  at  once  the  name  of  the  au- 
thor. Mr.  Andrew  Chatto,  whose  acquaintance 
I  made  just  then,  assured  me  that  he  was  cer- 
tain of  the  authorship  of  the  first  article,  on  sty- 
listic evidence;  and  I  found  him  tearing  out  the 
pages  of  the  "  Academy  "  and  keeping  them.  I 
found  also  a  number  of  other  people  doing  the 
same.  In  fact  I  do  not  exaggerate  in  saying  that 
the  success  of  the  serial  was  terrific — among 
about  a  hundred  people.  It  happened  to  me  to 
see  quite  sane  and  sober  writing  persons  gurgle 
with  joy  over  the  mere  recollection  of  sundry 
scenes  in  my  autobiography.  But  Mr.  Andrew 
Chatto,  an  expert  of  immense  experience,  gave 
me  his  opinion,  with  perhaps  even  more  than  his 
customary  blandness,  that  the  public  would  have 
no  use  for  my  autobiography.  I  could  scarcely 
adopt  his  view.  It  seemed  to  me  impossible 
that  so  honest  a  disclosure,  which  had  caused 
such  unholy  joy  in  some  of  the  most  weary  hearts 

iii 


PREFACE 

that  London  contains,  should  pass  unheeded  by 
a  more  general  public. 

Mr.  Andrew  Chatto  did  not  publish  this  par- 
ticular book  of  mine.  I  cannot  remember  if  it 
was  offered  to  him.  But  I  know  that  it  was  of- 
fered to  sundry  other  publishers  before  at  last 
it  found  a  sponsor.  There  was  no  wild  compe- 
tition for  it,  and  there  was  no  excitement  in  the 
press  when  it  appeared.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  excitement  among  my 
friends.  The  book  divided  my  friends  into  two 
camps.  A  few  were  extraordinarily  enthusias- 
tic and  delighted.  But  the  majority  were 
shocked.  Some — and  among  these  the  most  inti- 
mate and  beloved — were  so  shocked  that  they 
could  not  bear  to  speak  to  me  about  the  book, 
and  to  this  day  have  never  mentioned  it  to  me. 
Frankly,  I  was  startled.  I  suppose  the  book  was 
too  true.  Many  fine  souls  can  only  take  the 
truth  in  very  small  doses,  when  it  is  the  truth 
about  some  one  or  something  they  love.  One  of 
my  friends — nevertheless  a  realistic  novelist  of 
high  rank— declined  to  credit  that  I  had  been 
painting  myself;  he  insisted  on  treating  the  cen- 
tral character  as  fictional,  while  admitting  the 

events  described  were  factual. 

iv 


PREFACE 

The  reviews  varied  from  the  flaccid  indifferent 
to  the  ferocious.  No  other  book  of  mine  ever 
had  such  a  bad  press,  or  anything  like  such  a 
bad  press.  Why  respectable  and  dignified  or- 
gans should  have  been  moved  to  fury  by  the 
publication  of  a  work  whose  veracity  cannot  be 
impugned,  I  have  never  been  quite  able  to  under- 
stand ;  for  I  attacked  no  financial  interests ;  I  did 
not  attack  any  interest ;  I  merely  destroyed  a  few 
illusions  and  make-believes.  Yet  such  organs  as 
"  The  Athenaeum  "  and  "  Blackwood's  "  dragged 
forward  their  heaviest  artillery  against  the 
anonymous  author.  In  its  most  virulent  days 
"  Blackwood's  "  could  scarcely  have  been  more 
murderous.  Its  remarks  upon  me  will  bear  com- 
parison even  with  its  notorious  attack,  by  the 
same  well-known  hand,  on  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 
I  had,  of  course,  ample  opportunities  for  adjust- 
ing the  balance  between  myself  and  the  well- 
known  hand,  which- opportunities  I  did  not  en- 
tirely neglect.  Also  ,1  was  convinced  that  the 
time  had  arrived  for  avowing  the  authorship,  and 
I  immediately  included  the  book  in  the  official 
list  of  my  publications.  Till  then  the  dark  se- 
cret had  only  once  been  divulged  in  the  press — 
by  Sir  W.  Robertson  Nicoll.  But  this  journal- 


PREFACE 

ist,  whose  interest  in  the  literary  life  is  probably 
unsurpassed,  refrained  from  any  criticism. 

I  have  purposely  forgotten  the  number  of 
copies  sold.  It  was  the  smallest  in  my  experi- 
ence of  infinitesimal  numbers.  In  due  season 
the  publishers — to  my  regret,  and  conceivably 
now  to  theirs — *  remaindered '  the  poor  red-and- 
green  volume.  And  The  Times  Book  Club,  hav- 
ing apparently  become  possessed  of  a  large  stock 
of  the  work,  offered  it,  with  my  name  but  with- 
•ut  my  authority,  at  a  really  low  price.  I  think 
the  first  bargain  was  fivepence,  but  later  six- 
pence was  demanded.  As  The  Times  Book  Club 
steadily  continued  to  advertise  the  book,  I  sup- 
pose that  at  sixpence  it  must  have  had  quite  a 
vogue.  At  any  rate  it  has  been  quoted  from 
with  more  freedom  than  any  other  book  of  mine, 
and  has  indeed  obviously  formed  the  basis  of 
dozens  of  articles— especially  in  the  United 
States — of  which  the  writers  have  omitted  to 
offer  me  any  share  in  their  remuneration.  I 
have  myself  bought  copies  of  it  at  as  high  as  a 
shilling  a  piece,  as  a  speculation.  And  now  here, 
after  about  a  dozen  years,  is  a  new  edition,  repro- 
ducing word  for  word  the  original  text  in  all  its 
ingenuous  self-complacency. 

vi 


fWHO  now  reside  permanently  on  that 
curious  fourth-dimensional  planet  which 
we  call  the  literary  world;  I,  who  follow 
the  incredible  parasitic  trade  of  talking  about 
what  people  have  done,  who  am  a  sort  of  public 
weighing-machine  upon  which  bookish  wares 
must  halt  before  passing  from  the  factory  to  the 
consumer;  I,  who  habitually  think  in  articles, 
who  exist  by  phrases;  I,  who  seize  life  at  the 
pen's  point  and  callously  wrest  from  it  the  ma- 
terial which  I  torture  into  confections  styled 
essays,  short  stories,  novels,  and  plays ;  who  per- 
ceive in  passion  chiefly  a  theme,  and  in  tragedy 
chiefly  a  "situation";  who  am  so  morbidly 
avaricious  of  beauty  that  I  insist  on  finding  it 
where  even  it  is  not;  I,  in  short,  who  have  been 
victimized  to  the  last  degree  by  a  literary  tem- 
perament, and  glory  in  my  victimhood,  am  go- 
ing to  trace  as  well  as  I  can  the  phenomena  of 
the  development  of  that  idiosyncrasy  from 
its  inception  to  such  maturity  as  it  has 

5 


6  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

attained.  To  explain  it,  to  explain  it  away, 
I  shall  make  no  attempt;  I  know  that  I 
cannot.  I  lived  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
without  guessing  that  I  came  under  the  cate- 
gory of  Max  Nordau's  polysyllabic  accusations; 
the  trifling  foolish  mental  discipline  which 
stands  to  my  credit  was  obtained  in  science 
schools,  examination  rooms,  and  law  offices.  I 
grew  into  a  good  man  of  business;  and  my 
knowledge  of  affairs,  my1  faculty  for  the  nice 
conduct  of  negotiations,  my  skill  in  suggesting 
an  escape  from  a  dilemma,  were  often  employed 
to  serve  the  many  artists  among  whom,  by  a 
sheer  and  highly  improbable  accident,  I  was 
thrown.  While  sincerely  admiring  and  appre- 
ciating these  people,  in  another  way  I  conde- 
scended to  them  as  beings  apart  and  peculiar, 
and  unable  to  take  care  of  themselves  on  the 
asphalt  of  cities;  I  felt  towards  them  as  a  po- 
liceman at  a  crossing  feels  towards  pedestrians. 
Proud  of  my  hard,  cool  head,  I  used  to  twit  them 
upon  the  disadvantages  of  possessing  an  artistic 
temperament.  Then,  one  day,  one  of  them  re- 
torted: "You've  got  it  as  badly  as  any  of  us, 
if  you  only  knew  it.*'  I  laughed  tolerantly  at 
the  remark,  but  it  was  like  a  thunderclap  in  my 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   7 

ears,  a  sudden  and  disconcerting  revelation. 
Was  I,  too,  an  artist?  I  lay  awake  at  night 
asking  myself  this  question.  Something  hith- 
erto dormant  stirred  mysteriously  in  me;  some- 
thing apparently  foreign  awoke  in  my  hard,  cool 
head,  and  a  duality  henceforth  existed  there.  On 
a  certain  memorable  day  I  saw  tears  in  the  eyes 
of  a  woman  as  she  read  some  verses  which,  with 
journalistic  versatility,  I  had  written  to  the  order 
of  a  musical  composer.  I  walked  straight  out 
into  the  street,  my  heart  beating  like  a  horrid 
metronome.  Am  I  an  artist?  I  demanded;  and 
the  egotist  replied:  Can  you  doubt  it? 

From  that  moment  I  tacitly  assumed  a  quite 
new  set  of  possibilities,  and  deliberately  ordered 
the  old  ruse  self  to  exploit  the  self  just  born. 
And  so,  by  encouragement  and  fostering,  by  in- 
tuition and  imitation,  and  perhaps  affectation,  I 
gradually  became  the  thing  I  am,  the  djinn  that 
performs  tricks  with,  some  emotions,  a  pen,  and 
paper.  And  now,  having  shadowed  forth  the 
tale,  as  Browning  did  in  the  prologue  to  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,  I  will  proceed  to  amplify  it. 

Let  this  old  woe  step  on  the  stage  again! 
Act  itself  o'er  anew  fer  men  to  judge. 


n 

MtY  dealings  with  literature  go  back,  I 
suppose,  some  thirty  and  three  years. 
We  came  together  thus,  literature  and 
I.  It  was  in  a  kitchen  at  midday,  and  I  was  wait- 
ing for  my  dinner,  hungry  and  clean,  in  a  tartan 
frock  with  a  pinafore  over  it.  I  had  washed  my 
own  face,  and  dried  it,  and  I  remember  that  my 
eyes  smarted  with  lingering  soap,  and  my  skin 
was  drawn  by  the  evaporation  of  moisture  on  a 
cold  day.  I  held  in  my  hand  a  single  leaf  which 
had  escaped  from  a  printed  book.  How  it  came 
into  that  chubby  fist  I  cannot  recall.  The  remi- 
niscence begins  with  it  already  there.  I  gazed 
hard  at  the  paper,  and  pretended  with  all  my 
powers  to  be  completely  absorbed  in  its  con- 
tents; I  pretended  to  ignore  some  one  who  was 
rattling  saucepans  at  the  kitchen  range.  On  my 
left  a  very  long  and  mysterious  passage  led  to 
a  pawnshop  all  full  of  black  bundles.  I  heard 
my  brother  crying  at  the  other  end  of  the  pas- 
sage, and  his  noisy  naughtiness  offended  me. 

8 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  9 

For  myself,  I  felt  excessively  "  good "  with  my 
paper;  never  since  have  I  been  so  filled  with  the 
sense  o£  perfect  righteousness.  Here  was  I, 
clean,  quiet,  sedate,  studious;  and  there  was  my 
brother,  the  illiterate  young  Hooligan,  disturb- 
ing the  sacrosanct  shop,  and — what  was  worse — 
ignorant  of  his  inferiority  to  me.  Disgusted 
with  him,  I  passed  through  the  kitchen  into  an- 
other shop  on  the  right,  still  conning  the  page 
with  soapy,  smarting  eyes.  At  this  point  the 
light  of  memory  is  switched  off.  The  printed 
matter,  which  sprang  out  of  nothingness,  van- 
ishes back  into  the  same. 

I  could  not  read,  I  could  not  distinguish  one 
letter  from  another.  I  only  knew  that  the  signs 
and  wonders  constituted  print,  and  I  played  at 
reading  with  intense  earnestness.  I  actually  felt 
learned,  serious,  wise,  and  competently  superior, 
something  like  George  Meredith's  "  Dr.  Middle- 
ton."  Would  that  I 'could  identify  this  my  very 
first  literature!  I  review  three  or  four  hundred 
books  annually  now;*  out  of  crass,  saccharine, 
sentimentality,  I  would  give  a  year's  harvest  for 
the  volume  from  which  that  leaf  was  torn,  nay, 
for  the  leaf  alone,  as  though  it  might  be  a  Cax- 

*  Written  in  1900. 


io  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

ton.  I  remember  that  the  paper  was  faintly 
bluish  in  tint,  veined,  and  rather  brittle.  The 
book  was  probably  printed  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Perhaps  it  was  Lavater's  Physiognomy  or 
Blair's  Sermons,  or  Burnet's  Own  Time.  One  of 
these  three,  I  fancy,  it  must  surely  have  been. 

After  the  miraculous  appearance  and  disap- 
pearance of  that  torn  leaf,  I  remember  almost 
nothing  of  literature  for  several  years.  I  was  six 
or  so  when  The  Ugly  Duckling  aroused  in  me 
the  melancholy  of  life,  gave  me  to  see  the  deep 
sadness  which  pervades  all  romance,  beauty,  and 
adventure.  I  laughed  heartily  at  the  old  hen- 
bird's  wise  remark  that  the  world  extended  past 
the  next  field  and  much  further ;  I  could  perceive 
the  humour  of  that.  But  when  the  ugly  duck- 
ling at  last  flew  away  on  his  strong  pinions,  and 
when  he  met  the  swans  and  was  accepted  as  an 
equal,  then  I  felt  sorrowful,  agreeably  sorrow- 
ful. It  seemed  to  me  that  nothing  could  undo, 
atone  for,  the  grief  and  humiliations  of  the  false 
duckling's  early  youth.  I  brooded  over  the  in- 
justice of  his  misfortunes  for  days,  and  the  swans 
who  welcomed  him  struck  me  as  proud,  cold, 
and  supercilious  in  their  politeness.  I  have 
never  read  The  Ugly  Duckling  since  those  days. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  n 

It  survives  in  my  memory  as  a  long  and  com- 
plex narrative,  crowded  with  vague  and  myste- 
rious allusions,  and  wet  with  the  tears  of  things. 
No  novel — it  was  a  prodigious  novel  for  me — has 
more  deliciously  disturbed  me,  not  even  "  On  the 
Eve  "  or  "  Lost  Illusions."  Two  years  later  I  read 
"  Hiawatha."  The  picture  which  I  formed  of 
Minnehaha  remains  vividly  and  crudely  with  me ; 
it  resembles  a  simpering  waxen  doll  of  austere 
habit.  Nothing  else  can  I  recall  of  "  Hiawatha," 
save  odd  lines,  and  a  few  names  such  as  Gitchee- 
Gumee.  I  did  not  much  care  for  the  tale.  Soon 
after  I  read  it,  I  see  a  vision  of  a  jolly-faced 
house-painter  graining  a  door.  "  What  do  you 
call  that?  "  I  asked  him,  pointing  to  some  very 
peculiar  piece  of  graining,  and  he  replied, 
gravely :  "  That,  young  sir,  is  a  wigwam  to  wind 
the  moon  up  with."  I  privately  decided  that  he 
must  have  read,  not  "  Hiawatha,"  but  something 
similar  and  stranger,  something  even  more  wig- 
wammy.  I  dared  not  question  him  further,  be- 
cause he  was  so  witty. 

I  remember  no  other  literature  for  years.  But 
at  the  age  of  eleven  I  became  an  author.  I  was 
at  school  under  a  master  who  was  entirely  at  the 
mercy  of  the  new  notions  that  daily  occurred  to 


him.  He  introduced  games  quite  fresh  to  us, 
he  taught  us  to  fence  and  to  do  the  lesser  circle 
on  the  horizontal  bar ;  he  sailed  model  yachts  for 
us  on  the  foulest  canal  in  Europe;  he  played  us 
into  school  to  a  march  of  his  own  composing 
performed  on  a  harmonium  by  himself;  he 
started  a  debating  society  and  an  amateur  dra- 
matic club.  He  even  talked  about  our  honour, 
and,  having  mentioned  it,  audaciously  left  many 
important  things  to  its  care — with  what  fright- 
ful results  I  forget.  Once  he  suffered  the  spell 
of  literature,  read  us  a  poem  of  his  own,  and  told 
us  that  any  one  who  tried  could  write  poetry. 
As  it  were  to  prove  his  statement,  he  ordered  us 
all  to  write  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  Courage 
within  a  week,  and  promised  to  crown  the  best 
poet  with  a  rich  gift.  Having  been  commanded 
to  produce  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  Courage,  I 
produced  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  Courage  in, 
what  seemed  to  me,  the  most  natural  manner  in 
the  world.  I  thought  of  lifeboats  and  fire-en- 
gines, and  decided  on  lifeboats  for  the  mere  rea- 
son that  "  wave  "  and  "  save  "  would  rhyme  to- 
gether. A  lifeboat,  then,  was  to  save  the  crew  of 
a  wrecked  ship.  Next,  what  was  poetry?  I  de- 
sired a  model  structure  which  I  might  copy. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  13 

Turning  to  a  school  hymn-book  I  found — 

A  little  ship  was  on  the  sea, 

It  was  a  pretty  sight; 
It  sailed  along  so  pleasantly 

And  all  was  calm  and  bright. 

That  stanza  I  adopted,  and  slavishly  imitated. 
In  a  brief  space  a  poem  of  four  such  stanzas  was 
accomplished.  I  wrote  it  in  cold  blood,  ham- 
mered it  out  word  after  word,  and  was  much 
pleased  with  the  result.  On  the  following  day 
I  read  the  poem  aloud  to  myself,  and  was 
thrilled  with  emotion.  The  dashing  cruel  wave 
that  rhymed  with  save  appeared  to  me  intensely 
realistic.  I  failed  to  conceive  how  any  poem 
could  be  better  than  mine.  The  sequel  is  that 
only  one  other  boy  besides  myself  had  even  at- 
tempted verse.  One  after  another,  each  sullenly 
said  that  he  had  nothing  to  show.  (How  clever 
/  felt!)  Then  I  saw  my  rival's  composition;  it 
dealt  with  a  fire  in  New  York  and  many  fire-en- 
gines; I  did  not  care  for  it;  I  could  not  make 
sense  of  much  of  it ;  but  I  saw  with  painful  clear- 
ness that  it  was  as  far  above  mine  as  the  heaven 
was  above  the  earth  .... 

"Did  you  write  this  yourself?"  The  master 
was  addressing  the  creator  of  New  York  fire-en- 
gines. 


i4  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

"Yes,  sir." 

"All  of  it?" 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"You  lie,  sir." 

It  was  magnificent  for  me.  The  fool,  my  rival, 
relying  too  fondly  on  the  master's  ignorance  of 
modern  literature,  had  simply  transcribed  entire 
the  work  of  some  great  American  recitation- 
monger.  I  received  the  laurel,  which  I  fancy 
amounted  to  a  shilling. 

Nothing  dashed  by  the  fiasco  of  his  poetry  com- 
petition, the  schoolmaster  immediately  instituted 
a  competition  in  prose.  He  told  us  about  M. 
Jourdain,  who  talked  prose  without  knowing  it, 
and  requested  us  each  to  write  a  short  story 
upon  any  theme  we  might  choose  to  select.  I 
produced  the  story  with  the  same  ease  and  cer- 
tainty as  I  had  produced  the  verse.  I  had  no 
difficulty  in  finding  a  plot  which  satisfied  me; 
it  was  concerned  with  a  drowning  accident  at  the 
seaside,  and  it  culminated — with  a  remorse- 
less naturalism  that  even  thus  early  proclaimed 
the  elective  affinity  between  Flaubert  and 
myself — in  an  inquest.  It  described  the  wonders 
of  the  deep,  and  I  have  reason  to  remember  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  ,15 

it  likened  the  gap  between  the  fin  and  the  side 
of  a  fish  to  a  pocket.  In  this  competition  I  had 
no  competitor.  I,  alone,  had  achieved  fiction.  I 
watched  the  master  as  he  read  my  work,  and  I 
could  see  from  his  eyes  and  gestures  that  he 
thought  it  marvellously  good  for  the  boy.  He 
spoke  to  me  about  it  in  a  tone  which  I  had  never 
heard  from  him  before  and  never  heard  again, 
and  then,  putting  the  manuscript  in  a  drawer,  he 
left  us  to  ourselves  for  a  few  minutes. 

"  I'll  just  read  it  to  you,"  said  the  big  boy  of 
the  form,  a  daring  but  vicious  rascal.  He 
usurped  the  pedagogic  armchair,  found  the  man- 
uscript, rapped  the  ruler  on  the  desk,  and  began 
to  read.  I  protested  in  vain.  The  whole  class 
roared  with  laughter,  and  I  was  overcome  with 
shame.  I  know  that  I,  eleven,  cried.  Presently 
the  reader  stopped  and  scratched  his  head;  the 
form  waited. 

"Oh!"  he  exclaimed.  "Fishes  have  pockets! 
Fishes  have  pockets!/' 

The  phrase  was  used  as  a  missile  against  me 
for  months. 

The  master  returned  with  his  assistant,  and 
the  latter  also  perused  the  tale. 


,t6  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

"  Very  remarkable !  "  he  sagely  commented — 
to  be  sage  was  his  foible,  "  very  remarkable,  in- 
deed!" 

Yet  I  can  remember  no  further  impulse  to 
write  a  story  for  at  least  ten  years.  Despite  this 
astonishing  success,  martyrdom,  and  glory,  I 
forthwith  abandoned  fiction  and  went  mad  on 
water-colours. 


Ill 

THE  insanity  of  water-colours  must  have 
continued  for  many  years.  I  say  insan- 
ity, because  I  can  plainly  perceive  now 
tHat  I  had  not  the  slightest  genuine  aptitude  for 
graphic  art.  In  the  curriculum  of  South  Ken- 
sington as  taught  at  a  provincial  art  school  I1 
never  got  beyond  the  stage  known  technically  as 
"  third-grade  freehand,"  and  even  in  that  my 
"lining-in"  was  considered  to  be  a  little  worse 
than  mediocre.  O  floral  forms,  how  laboriously 
I  deprived  you  of  the  grace  of  your  Hellenic  con- 
vention !  As  for  the  "  round "  and  the  "  an- 
tique," as  for  pigments,  these  mysteries  were 
withheld  from  me  by  South  Kensington.  It 
was  at  home,  drawn 'on  by  a  futile  but  imperious 
fascination,  that  I  practised  them,  and  water- 
colours  in  particular.  I  never  went  to  nature;  I 
had  not  the  skill,  nor  do  I  remember  that  I  felt 
any  sympathetic  appreciation  of  nature.  I  was 
content  to  copy.  I  wasted  the  substance  of  un- 
cles and  aunts  in  a  complicated  and  imposing 

17 


i8  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

apparatus  of  easels,  mahlsticks,  boards,  What- 
man, camel-hair,  and  labelled  tubes.  I  rose 
early,  I  cheated  school  and  office,  I  outraged  the 
sanctity  of  the  English  Sabbath,  merely  to  sat- 
isfy an  ardour  of  copying.  I  existed  on.  the 
Grand  Canal  in  Venice;  at  Toledo,  Nuremburg, 
and  Delft;  and  on  slopes  commanding  a  view  of 
Turner's  ruined  abbeys,  those  abbeys  through 
whose  romantic  windows  streamed  a  yellow 
moonlight  inimitable  by  any  combination  of 
ochre,  lemon,  and  gamboge  in  my  paint-box. 
Every  replica  that  I  produced  was  the  history  of 
a  disillusion.  With  what  a  sanguine  sweep  I 
laid  on  the  first  broad  washes — the  pure  blue 
of  water,  the  misty  rose  of  sun-steeped  palaces, 
the  translucent  sapphire  of  Venetian  and  Span- 
ish skies!  And  then  what  a  horrible  muddying 
ensued,  what  a  fading-away  of  magic  and  deflori- 
ation  of  hopes,  as  in  detail  after  detail  the  picture 
gradually  lost  tone  and  clarity!  It  is  to  my 
credit  that  I  was  always  disgusted  by  the  fatuity 
of  these  efforts.  I  have  not  yet  ceased  to  won- 
der what  precise  part  of  the  supreme  purpose 
was  served  by  seven  or  eight  years  of  them. 

From  fine  I  turned  to  applied  art,  diverted  by 
a  periodical  called  "  The  Girl's  Own  Paper."    For 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  19 

a  long  period  this  monthly,  which  I  now  regard 
as  quaint,  but  which  I  shall  never  despise,  was 
my  principal  instrument  of  culture.  It  alone 
blew  upon  the  spark  of  artistic  feeling  and  kept 
it  alive.  I  derived  from  it  my  first  ideals  of 
aesthetic  and  of  etiquette.  Under  its  influence 
my  brother  and  myself  started  on  a  revolutionary 
campaign  against  all  the  accepted  canons  of 
house  decoration.  We  invented  friezes,  dadoes, 
and  panels;  we  cut  stencils;  and  we  carried  out 
our  bright  designs  through  half  a  house.  It  was 
magnificent,  glaring,  and  immense;  it  fore- 
shadowed the  modern  music-hall.  Visitors  were 
shown  through  our  rooms  by  parents  who  tried 
in  vain  to  hide  from  us  their  parental  compla- 
cency. The  professional  house-decorator  was  re- 
duced to  speechless  admiration  of  our  originality 
and  extraordinary  enterprise;  he  really  was 
struck — he  could  appreciate  the  difficulties  we 
had  conquered. 

During  all  this,  and;  with  a  succession  of  ex- 
aminations continually  looming  ahead,  literature 
never  occurred  to  me;  it  was  forgotten.  I 
worked  in  a  room  lined  with  perhaps  a  couple  of 
thousand  volumes,  but  I  seldom  opened  any  of 
them.  Still,  I  must  have  read  a  great  deal,  me- 


20  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

chanically,  and  without  enthusiasm:  serials,  and 
boys'  books.  At  twenty-one  I  know  that  I  had 
read  almost  nothing  of  Scott,  Jane  Austen,  Dick- 
ens, Thackeray,  the  Brontes,  and  George  Eliot. 
An  adolescence  devoted  to  water-colours  has 
therefore  made  it  forever  impossible  for  me  to 
emulate,  in  my  functions  of  critic,  the  allusive 
Langism  of  Mr.  Andrew  Lang;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  it  has  conferred  on  me  the  rare  advantage 
of  being  in  a  position  to  approach  the  classics 
and  the  alleged  classics  with  a  mind  entirely  un- 
prejudiced by  early  recollections.  Thus  I  read 
David  Copperfield  for  the  first  time  at  thirty, 
after  I  had  written  a  book  or  two  and  some 
hundreds  of  articles  myself.  The  one  author 
whom  as  a  youth  I  "  devoured  "  was  Ouida,  cre- 
ator of  the  incomparable  Strathmore,  the  Strath- 
more  upon  whose  wrath  the  sun  unfortunately 
went  down.  I  loved  Ouida  much  for  the  im- 
passioned nobility  of  her  style,  but  more  for  the 
scenes  of  gilded  vice  into  which  she  introduced 
me.  She  it  was  who  inspired  me  with  that  taste 
for  liaisons  under  pink"  lampshades  which  I  shall 
always  have,  but  which,  owing  to  a  puritanical 
ancestry  and  upbringing,  I  shall  never  be  able  to 
satisfy.  Not  even  the  lesson  of  Prince  lo's  mar- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  21 

tyrdom  in  "  Friendship  "  could  cure  me  of  this 
predilection  that  I  blush  for.  Yes,  Ouida'was  the 
unique  fountain  of  romance  for  me.  Of  poetry, 
save  "  Hiawatha  "  and  the  enforced  and  tedious 
Shakespeare  of  schools,  I  had  read  nothing. 

The  principal  local  daily  offered  to  buy  ap- 
proved short  stories  from  local  readers  at  a 
guinea  apiece.  Immediately  I  wrote  one.  What, 
beyond  the  chance  of  a  guinea,  made  me  turn  so 
suddenly  to  literature  I  cannot  guess ;  it  was  eight 
years  since  I  had  sat  down  as  a  creative  artist. 
But  I  may  mention  here  that  I  have  never  once 
produced  any  literary  work  without  a  prelimi- 
nary incentive  quite  other  than  the  incentive  of 
ebullient  imagination.  I  have  never  "  wanted  to 
write,"  until  the  extrinsic  advantages  of  writing 
had  presented  themselves  to  me.  I  cannot  re- 
call that  I  found  any  difficulty  in  concocting  the 
story.  The  heroine  was  named  Leonora,  and 
after  having  lost  sight  of  her  for  years,  the  hero 
discovered  her  again  as  a  great  actress  in  a  great 
play.  (Miss  Ellen  Terry  in  "Faust"  had 
passed  disturbingly  athwart  my  existence.)  I 
remember  no  more.  The  story  was  refused. 
But  I  firmly  believe  that  for  a  boy  of  nine- 
teen it  was  something  of  an  achievement.  No 


22  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

one  saw  it  except  myself  and  the  local  editor ;  it 
was  a  secret,  and  now  it  is  a  lost  secret.  Soon 
afterwards  another  local  newspaper  advertised 
for  a  short  serial  of  local  interest.  Immediately 
I  wrote  the  serial,  again  without  difficulty.  It 
was  a  sinister  narrative  to  illustrate  the  evils  of 
marrying  a  drunken  woman.  (I  think  I  had  just 
read  "  L'Assommoir  "  in  Vizetelly's  original  edi- 
tion of  Zola.)  There  was  a  street  in  our  town 
named  Commercial  Street.  I  laid  the  scene  there, 
and  called  it  Speculation  Street.  I  know  not 
what  satiric  criticism  of  modern  life  was  involved 
in  that  change  of  name.  This  serial  too  was  re- 
fused; I  suspect  that  it  was  entirely  without 
serial  interest. 

I  had  matriculated  at  London  University  three 
years  before,  and  was  then  working,  without 
heart,  for  a  law  degree  (which  I  never  won) ; 
instead  of  Ouida  my  nights  were  given  to 
Austin's  Jurisprudence,  the  Institutes  of  Justin- 
ian and  of  Gaius,  and  Maine's  Ancient  Law; 
the  last  is  a  great  and  simple  book,  but  it  can- 
not be  absorbed  and  digested  while  the  student 
is  pre-occupied  with  the  art  of  fiction.  Out  of 
an  unwilling  respect  for  the  University  of  Lon- 
don, that  august  negation  of  the  very  idea  of  a 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  23 

University,  I  abandoned  literature.  As  to  water- 
colours,  my  tubes  had  dried  up  long  since;  and 
house-decoration  was  at  a  standstill. 

The  editor  of  the  second  newspaper,  after  a 
considerable  interval,  wrote  and  asked  me  to  call 
on  him,  for  all  the  world  as  though  I  were  the 
impossible  hero  of  a  journalistic  novel.  The 
interview  between  us  was  one  of  these  plagia- 
risms of  fiction  which  real  life  is  sometimes 
guilty  of.  The  editor  informed  me  that  he  had 
read  my  sinister  serial  with  deep  interest,  and 
felt  convinced,  his  refusal  of  it  notwithstanding, 
that  I  was  marked  out  for  the  literary  vocation. 
He  offered  me  a  post  on  his  powerful  organ  as 
a  regular  weekly  contributor,  without  salary. 
He  said  that  he  was  sure  I  could  write  the  sort 
of  stuff  he  wanted,  and  I  entirely  agreed  with1 
him.  My  serene  confidence  in  my  ability,  pen 
in  hand,  to  do  anything  that  I  wished  to  do,  was 
thus  manifest  in  the^  beginning.  Glory  shone 

around  as  I  left  the  editorial  office.    The  roman- 

t 

tic  quality  of  this  episode  is  somewhat  impaired 
by  the  fact,  which  I  shall  nevertheless  mention, 
that  the  editor  was  a  friend  of  the  family,  and  that 
my  father  was  one  of  several  optimistic  persons 
who  were  dropping  money  on  the  powerful  organ 


24  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

every  week.  The  interview,  however,  was  in- 
deed that  peculiar  phenomenon  (so  well  known 
to  all  readers  of  biography)  styled  the  "  turning- 
point  in  one's  career."  But  I  lacked  the  wit  to 
perceive  this  for  several  years. 

The  esteemed  newspaper  to  which  I  was  now 
attached  served  several  fairly  large  municipalities 
which  lay  so  close  together  as  to  form  in  reality 
one  very  large  town  divided  against  itself. 
Each  wilful  cell  in  this  organism  was  repre- 
sented by  its  own  special  correspondent  on  the 
newspaper,  and  I  was  to  be  the  correspondent 
for  my  native  town.  I  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  news  department;  menial  reporters  attended 
to  that.  My  task  was  to  comment  weekly  upon 
the  town's  affairs  to  the  extent  of  half  a  column 
of  paragraphic  notes. 

"  Whatever  you  do,  you  must  make  your  pars, 
bright,"  said  the  editor,  and  he  repeated  the  word 
^-"Bright!" 

Now  I  was  entirely  ignorant  of  my  town's  af- 
fairs. I  had  no  suspicion  of  the  incessant  comedy 
Of  municipal  life.  For  two  days  I  traversed  our 
stately  thoroughfares  in  search  of  material,  won- 
dering what,  in  the  names  of  Horace  Greeley, 
James  Gordon  Bennett,  and  Mr.  Delane,  my  first 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  25 

contribution  was  going  to  consist  of.  Law  went 
to  the  devil,  its  natural  home.  Then  I  happened 
to  think  of  tram-lines.  The  tram-lines,  under  the 
blessing  of  Heaven,  were  badly  laid,  and  con- 
stituted a  menace  to  all  wheeled  traffic  save 
trams;  also  the  steam-engines  of  the  trams  were 
offensive.  I  wrote  sundry  paragraphs  on  that 
topic,  and  having  thus  acquired  momentum,  I  ar- 
rived safely  at  the  end  of  my  half  column  by 
the  aid  of  one  or  two  minor  trifles. 

In  due  course  I  called  at  the  office  to  correct 
proof,  and  I  was  put  into  the  hands  of  the  sub- 
editor. It  was  one  of  those  quarters-of-an-hour 
that  make  life  worth  living;  for  the  sub-editor 
appreciated  me;  nay,  he  regarded  me  as  some- 
thing of  a  journalistic  prodigy,  and  his  adjectives 
as  he  ran  through  the  proof  were  extremely  agree- 
able. Presently  he  came  to  a  sentence  in  which 
I  had  said  that  such-and-such  a  proceeding 
"  smacked  of  red  tape." 

" '  Smacked  of  red  tape '  J  "  He  lookVd  up  at 
me  doubtfully.  "  Rath*er  a  mixed  metaphor, 
isn't  it?" 

I  didn't  in  the  least  know  what  he  meant,  but 
I  knew  that  that  sentence  was  my  particular  pet. 
"  Not  at  all !  "  I  answered  with  feeling.  "  Noth- 


26  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

ing  of  the  sort!  It  does  smack  of  red  tape — 
you  must  admit  that." 

And  the  sentence  stood.  I  had  awed  the  sub- 
editor. 

My  notes  enjoyed  a  striking  success.  Their 
brightness  scintillated  beyond  the  brightness  of 
the  comments  from  any  other  town.  People 
wondered  who  this  caustic,  cynical,  and  witty 
anonymous  wag  was.  I  myself  was  vastly  well 
satisfied;  I  read  the  stuff  over  and  over  again; 
but  at  the  same  time  I  perceived  that  I  could 
make  my  next  contribution  infinitely  more  bril- 
liant. And  I  did.  I  mention  this  matter,  less 
because  it  was  my  first  appearance  in  print,  than 
because  it  first  disclosed  to  me  the  relation  be- 
tween literature  and  life.  In  writing  my  stories 
I  had  never  thought  for  a  moment  of  life.  I  had 
made  something,  according  to  a  model,  not 
dreaming  that  fiction  was  supposed  to  reflect  real 
life.  I  had  regarded  fiction  as — fiction,  a  con- 
coction on  the  plane  of  the  Grand  Canal,  or  the 
Zocodover  at  Toledo.  But  in  this  other  litera- 
ture I  was  obliged  to  begin  with  life  itself.  The 
wheel  of  a  dog-cart  spinning  off  as  it  jammed 
against  a  projecting  bit  of  tram-line;  a  cyclist 
overset:  what  was  there  in  that?  Nothing.  Yet 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  27 

I  had  taken  that  nothing  and  transformed  it  into 
something  —  something  that  seemed  important, 
permanent,  literary.  I  did  not  comprehend  the 
process,  but  I  saw  its  result.  I  do  not  compre- 
hend it  now.  The  man  who  could  explain  it 
could  answer  the  oft-repeated  cry:  What  is  Art? 
Soon  afterwards  I  had  a  delightful  illustration 
of  the  power  of  the  press.  That  was  the  era  of 
coffee-houses,  when  many  excellent  persons  with- 
out too  much  humour  tried  all  over  the  country 
to  wean  the  populace  from  beer  by  the  superior 
attractions  of  coffee  and  cocoa ;  possibly  they  had 
never  tasted  beer.  Every  town  had  its  coffee- 
house company,  limited.  Our  coffee-house  hap- 
pened to  be  a  pretty  bad  one,  while  the  coffee- 
house of  the  next  town  was  conspicuously  good. 
I  said  so  in  print,  with  my  usual  display  of 
verbal  pyrotechny.  The  paper  had  not  been  pub- 
lished an  hour  before  the  aggrieved  manager  of 
our  coffee-house  had  seen  his  directors  on  the 
subject.  He  said  I  lied,  that  I  was  unpatriotic, 
and  that  he  wanted  my  head  on  a  charger;  or 
words  to  that  effect.  He  asked  my  father,  who 
was  a  director  of  both  newspaper  and  coffee- 
house, whether  he  could  throw  any  light  on  the 
identity  of  the  scurrilous  and  cowardly  scribe, 


and  my  father,  to  his  eternal  credit,  said  that  he 
could  not.  Again  I  lived  vividly  and  fully.  As 
for  our  coffee-house,  it  mended  its  ways. 

The  County  Council  Bill  had  just  become  law, 
and  our  town  enjoyed  the  diversions  of  electing 
its  first  County  Councillor.  The  rival  candidates 
were  a  brewer  and  a  prominent  lay  religionist. 
My  paper  supported  the  latter,  and  referred  to 
the  conflict  between  the  forces  of  civilization  and 
the  forces  of  barbarism.  It  had  a  magnificent 
heading  across  two  columns :  "  Brains  versus 
Beer,"  and  expressed  the  most  serene  confidence 
as  to  the  result.  Of  course,  my  weekly  notes 
during  the  campaign  were  a  shield  and  a  buckler, 
to  the  religionist,  who  moreover  lived  next  door. 

The  result  of  the  poll  was  to  be  announced  late 
on  the  night  before  the  paper  went  to  press.  The 
editor  gave  me  instructions  that  if  we  lost,  I  was 
to  make  fun  of  the  brewer,  and  in  any  case  to 
deliver  my  copy  by  eleven  o'clock  next  morning. 
We  lost  heavily,  disastrously;  the  forces  of  civili- 
zation were  simply  nowhere.  I  attended  the  dec- 
laration of  the  poll,  and  as  the  elated  brewer  made 
his  speech  of  ceremony  in  front  of  the  town  hall, 
I  observed  that  his  hat  was  stove-in  and  askew. 
I  fastened  on  that  detail,  and  went  to  bed  in 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  29 

meditation  upon  the  facetious  notes  which  I  was 
to  write  early  on  the  morrow.  In  the  middle  of 
the  night  I  was  wakened  up.  My  venerable 
grandfather,  who  lived  at  the  other  end  of  the 
town,  had  been  taken  suddenly  ill  and  was  dy- 
ing. As  his  eldest  grandson,  my  presence  at  the 
final  scene  was  indispensable.  I  went,  and  talked 
in  low  tones  with  my  elders.  Upstairs  the  old 
man  was  fighting  for  every  breath.  The  doctor 
descended  at  intervals  and  said  that  it  was  only 
a  question  of  hours.  I  was  absolutely  obsessed 
by  a  delicious  feeling  of  the  tyranny  of  the 
press.  Nothing  domestic  could  be  permitted  to 
interfere  with  my  duty  as  a  journalist. 

"  I  must  write  those  facetious  comments  while 
my  grandfather  is  dying  upstairs ! "  This 
thought  filled  my  brain.  It  seemed  to  me  to  be 
fine,  splendid.  I  was  intensely  proud  of  being 
laid  under  a  compulsion  so  startlingly  dramatic. 
Could  I  manufacture  jokes  while  my  grandfather 
expired?  Certainly:  I  was  a  journalist.  And 
never  since  have  I  been  more  ardently  a  journal- 
ist than  I  was  that  night  and  morning.  With  a 
strong  sense  of  the  theatrical,  I  wrote  my  notes 
at  dawn.  They  delicately  excoriated  the  brewer. 

The  curious  thing  is  that  my  grandfather  sur- 


30  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

vived  not  only  that,  but  several  other  fatal  at- 
tacks. 

A  few  weeks  later,  my  newspaper  was  stag- 
gering under  the  blow  of  my  migration  to  Lon- 
don. 


IV 

I  CAME  to  London  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
with  no  definite  ambition,  and  no  im- 
mediate object  save  to  escape  from  an  in- 
tellectual and  artistic  environment  which  had 
long  been  excessively  irksome  to  me.  Some 
achievement  of  literature  certainly  lay  in  the 
abyss  of  my  desires,  but  I  allowed  it  to  remain 
there,  vague  and  almost  unnoticed.  As  for 
provincial  journalism,  without  meed  in  coin,  it 
had  already  lost  the  charm  of  novelty,  and  I  had 
been  doing  it  in  a  perfunctory  manner.  I  made 
no  attempt  to  storm  Fleet  Street.  The  fact  is 
that  I  was  too  much  engaged  in  making  a  meal 
off  London,  swallowing  it,  to  attend  to  anything 
else;  this  repast  continued  for  over  two  years. 
I  earned  a  scanty  Hying  as  shorthand  clerk,  at 
first,  in  a  solicitor's  office;  but  a  natural  gift  for 
the  preparation  of  bills  of  costs  for  taxation,  that 
highly  delicate  and  complicated  craft,  and  an 
equally  natural  gift  for  advancing  my  own  in- 
terests, soon  put  me  in  receipt  of  an  income  that 


32  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

many  "  admitted  "  clerks  would  have  envied :  to 
be  exact  and  prosaic,  two  hundred  a  year.  An- 
other clerk  in  the  office  happened  to  be  an  ar- 
dent bibliophile.  We  became  friends,  and  I  owe 
him  much.  He  could  chatter  in  idiomatic 
French  like  a  house  on  fire,  and  he  knew  the 
British  Museum  Reading  Room  from  its  centre 
to  its  periphery.  He  first  taught  me  to  regard  a 
book,  not  as  an  instrument  for  obtaining  infor- 
mation or  emotion,  but  as  a  book,  printed  at 
such  a  place  in  such  a  year  by  so-and-so,  bound 
by  so-and-so,  and  carrying  colophons,  registers, 
water-marks,  and  fautes  df impression.  He  was 
acquainted,  I  think,  with  every  second-hand  book- 
stall in  the  metropolis;  and  on  Saturday  after- 
noons we  visited  most  of  them.  We  lived  for 
bargains  and  rarities.  We  made  it  a  point  of 
honour  to  buy  one  book  every  day,  and  when 
bargains  failed  we  used  to  send  out  the  mes- 
sengers for  a  Camelot  Classic  or  so — ninepence 
net;  this  series  was  just  then  at  the  height  of  its 
vogue.  We  were  for  ever  bringing  into  the  of- 
fice formidable  tomes — the  choice  productions  of 
the  presses  of  Robert  and  Henry  Stephen,  Elzevir, 
Baskerville,  Giunta,  Foulis,  and  heaven  knows 
whom.  My  discovery  of  the  Greek  editio  prin- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  33 

ceps  of  Plutarch,  printed  by  Philip  Giunta  at 
Florence  in  1517,  which  I  bought  in  White- 
chapel  for  two  shillings,  nearly  placed  me  on  a 
level  with  my  preceptor.  We  decidedly  created 
a  sensation  in  the  office.  The  "  admitted  "  clerks 
and1  the  articled  clerks,  whom  legal  etiquette 
forbids  as  a  rule  to  fraternize  with  the  "  unad- 
mitted," took  a  naive  and  unaffected  pleasure  in 
our  society.  One  day  I  was  examining  five 
enormous  folios  full-bound  in  yellow  calf,  in  the 
clients'  waiting-room,  when  the  senior  partner 
surprised  me  thus  wasting  the  firm's  time. 

"What's  all  this?"  he  inquired  politely.  He 
was  far  too  polite  to  remonstrate. 

"  This,  sir?  Bayle's  *  Dictionaire  Historique  et 
Critique/  "  I  replied. 

"Is  it  yours?" 

"  Yes,  sir.  I  bought  it  in  the  lunch-hour  at 
Hodgson's." 

"Ah!" 

He  retired  abashed*  He  was  a  gentle  fellow, 
and  professed  an  admiration  for  Browning;  but 
the  chief  thing  of  which  he  had  the  right  to  be 
proud  was  his  absolutely  beautiful  French  ac- 
cent. 

I  had  scarcely  been  in  London  a  year  when 


34  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

my  friend  and  I  decided  to  collaborate  in  a 
bibliographical  dictionary  of  rare  and  expensive 
books  in  all  European  languages.  Such  a 
scheme  sounds  farcical,  but  we  were  perfectly 
serious  over  it;  and  the  proof  of  our  seriousness 
is  that  we  worked  at  it  every  morning  before 
breakfast.  I  may  mention  also  that  we  lunched 
daily  at  the  British  Museum,  much  to  the  detri- 
ment of  our  official  duties.  For  months  we  must 
have  been  quite  mad — obsessed.  We  got  about 
as  far  as  the  New  English  Dictionary  travelled 
in  the  first  twenty  years  of  its  life,  that  is  to 
say,  two-thirds  through  A;  and  then  suddenly, 
irrationally,  without  warning,  we  dropped  it. 
The  mere  conception  of  this  dictionary  was  so 
splendid  that  there  was  a  grandeur  even  in  drop- 
ping it. 

Soon  after  this,  the  managing  clerk  of  the  of- 
fice, a  university  man,  autocratic,  but  kindly  and 
sagacious,  bought  a  country  practice  and  left  us. 
He  called  me  into  his  room  to  say  good-bye. 

"  You'd  no  business  to  be  here,"  he  said, 
sharply.  "  You  ought  to  be  doing  something 
else.  If  I  find  you  here  when  I  visit  town  next, 
I  shall  look  on  you  as  a  d — d  fool.  Don't  for- 
get what  I  say." 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  35 

I  did  not.  On  the  contrary,  his  curt  speech 
made  a  profound  impression  on  me.  He  was 
thirty,  and  a  man  of  the  world;  I  was  scarcely 
twenty-three.  My  self-esteem,  always  vigorous, 
was  flattered  into  all  sorts  of  new  developments. 
I  gradually  perceived  that,  quite  without  intend- 
ing it,  I  had  acquired  a  reputation.  As  what? 
Well,  as  a  learned  youth  not  lacking  in  bril- 
liance. And  this  reputation  had,  I  am  convinced, 
sprung  solely  from  the  habit  of  buying  books 
printed  mainly  in  languages  which  neither  my- 
self nor  my  acquaintances  could  read.  I  owned 
hundreds  of  books,  but  I  seldom  read  any  of 
them,  except  the  bibliographical  manuals;  I  had 
no  leisure  to  read.  I  scanned.  I  can  only  re- 
member, in  this  period,  that  I  really  studied  one 
book — Plato's  "  Republic,"  which  I  read  because 
I  thought  I  was  doing  the  correct  thing.  Beyond 
this,  and  a  working  knowledge  of  French,  and  an 
entirely  sterile  apparatus  of  bibliographical 
technique,  I  had  mastered  nothing.  Three  quali- 
ties I  did  possess,  and  on  these  three  qualities 
I  have  traded  ever  since.  First,  an  omnivorous 
and  tenacious  memory  (now,  alas,  effete!) — the 
kind  of  memory  that  remembers  how  much  Lon- 


36  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

don  spends  per  day  in  cab  fares  just  as  easily  as 
the  order  of  Shakespeare's  plays  or  the  stock" 
anecdotes  of  Shelley  and  Byron.  Second,  a 
naturally  sound  taste  in  literature.  And  third, 
the  invaluable,  despicable,  disingenuous  journal- 
istic faculty  of  seeming  to  know  much  more  than 
one  does  know.  None  knew  better  than  I  that, 
in  any  exact,  scholarly  sense,  I  knew  nothing  of 
literature.  Nevertheless,  I  should  have  been 
singularly  blind  not  to  see  that  I  knew  far  more 
about  literature  than  nine-tenths  of  the  people 
around  me.  These  people  pronounced  me  an 
authority,  and  I  speedily  accepted  myself  as  an 
authority:  were  not  my  shelves  a  silent  demon- 
stration? By  insensible  degrees  I  began  to  as- 
sume the  pose  of  an  authority.  I  have  carried 
that  pose  into  newspaper  offices  and  the  very 
arcana  of  literary  culture,  and  never  yet  met  with 
a  disaster.  Yet  in  the  whole  of  my  life  I  have 
not  devoted  one  day  to  the  systematic  study  of 
literature.  In  truth,  it  is  absurdly  easy  to  im- 
press even  persons  who  in  the  customary  mean- 
ing of  the  term  have  the  right  to  call  themselves 
well-educated.  I  remember  feeling  very  shy  one 
night  in  a  drawing-room  rather  new  to  me.  My 


37. 

host  had  just  returned  from  Venice,  and  was 
describing  the  palace  where  Browning  lived ;  but 
he  could  not  remember  the  name  of  it. 

"  Rezzonico,"  I  said  at  once,  and  I  chanced  to 
intercept  the  look  of  astonishment  that  passed 
between  host  and  hostess. 

I  frequented  that  drawing-room  a  great  deal 
afterwards,  and  was  always  expected  to  speak 
ex  cathedra  on  English  literature. 

London  the  entity  was  at  least  as  good  as  my 
dreams  of  it,  but  the  general  mass  of  the  persons 
composing  it,  considered  individually,  were  a 
sad  disappointment.  "  What  duffers !  "  I  said  to 
myself  again  and  again.  "  What  duffers ! "  I 
had  come  prepared  to  sit  provincially  at  the  feet 
of  these  Londoners !  I  was  humble  enough  when 
I  arrived,  but  they  soon  cured  me  of  that — they 
were  so  ready  to  be  impressed!  What  struck 
me  was  the  extraordinary  rarity  of  the  men  who 
really  could  "  do  their  job."  And  when  I  found 
them,  they  were  invariably  provincials  like  me 
who  had  come  up  with  the  same  illusions  and 
suffered  the  same  enlightenment.  All  who  were 
successfully  performing  that  feat  known  as  "  get- 
ting on  "  were  provincials.  I  enrolled  myself  in 
their  ranks.  I  said  that  I  would  get  on.  The 


38  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

"  d— d  fool "  phrase  of  the  Chancery  clerk  rang 
in  my  ears  like  a  bugle  to  march. 

And  for  about  a  year  I  didn't  move  a  step.  I 
read  more  than  I  have  ever  read  before  or  since. 
But  I  did  nothing.  I  made  no  effort,  nor  did  I 
subject  myself  to  any  mental  discipline.  I 
simply  gorged  on  English  and  French  literature 
for  the  amusement  I  could  extract  from  such 
gluttony,  and  found  physical  exercise  in  becoming 
the  champion  of  an  excessively  suburban  lawn- 
tennis  club.  I  wasted  a  year  in  contemplating  the 
magnificence  of  my  future  doings.  Happily  I 
never  spoke  these  dreams  aloud!  They  were 
only  the  private  solace  of  my  idleness.  Now  it 
was  that  I  at  last  decided  upon  the  vocation  of 
letters;  not  scholarship,  not  the  dilettantism  of 
belles-lettres,  but  sheer  constructive  journalism 
and  possibly  fiction.  London,  however,  is  chiefly 
populated  by  grey-haired  men  who  for  twenty 
years  have  been  about  to  become  journalists  and 
authors.  And  but  for  a  fortunate  incident — the 
thumb  of  my  Fate  has  always  been  turned  up — 
I  might  ere  this  have  fallen  back  into  that  tragic 
rearguard  of  Irresolutes. 

Through  the  good  offices  of  my  appreciative 
friends  who  had  forgotten  the  name  of  the  Palaz- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  39 

zo  Rezzonico,  I  was  enabled  to  take  up  my 
quarters  in  the  abode  of  some  artists  at  Chelsea. 
I  began  to  revolve,  dazzled,  in  a  circle  of  painters 
and  musicians  who,  without  the  least  affecta- 
tion, spelt  Art  with  the  majuscule;  indeed,  it 
never  occurred  to  them  that  people  existed  who 
would  spell  it  otherwise.  I  was  compelled  to  set 
to  work  on  the  reconstruction  of  nearly  all  my 
ideals.  I  had  lived  in  a  world  where  beauty  was 
not  mentioned,  seldom  thought  of.  I  believe  I 
had  scarcely  heard  the  adjective  "  beautiful "  ap- 
plied to  anything  whatever,  save  confections  like 
Gounod's  "  There  is  a  green  hill  far  away." 
Modern  oak  sideboards  were  called  handsome, 
and  Christmas  cards  were  called  pretty ;  and  that 
was  about  all.  But  now  I  found  myself  among 
souls  that  talked  of  beauty  openly  and  unashamed. 
On  the  day  that  I  arrived  at  the  house  in  Chelsea, 
the  drawing-room  had  just  been  papered,  and 
the  pattern  of  the  frieze  resembled  nothing  in  my 
experience.  I  looked  #at  it. 

"  Don't  you  think  our  frieze  is  charming'? " 
the  artist  said,  his  eyes  glistening. 

It  was  the  man's  obvious  sincerity  that  as- 
tounded me.  O  muse  of  mahogany  and  green 
rep!  Here  was  a  creature  who  took  a  serious 


40  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

interest  in  the  pattern  of  his  wall-papers!  I  ex- 
pressed my  enthusiasm  for  the  frieze. 

"  Yes,"  he  replied,  with  simple  solemnity,  "  H 
is  <oery  beautiful.  " 

This  worship  of  beauty  was  continuous.  The 
very  teaspoons  were  banned  or  blessed  on  their 
curves,  and  as  for  my  rare  editions,  they  wilted 
under  tests  to  which  they  were  wholly  unac- 
customed. I  possessed  a  rarissime  illustrated 
copy  of  Manon  Lescaut,  of  which  I  was  very 
proud,  and  I  showed  it  with  pride  to  the  artist. 
He  remarked  that  it  was  one  of  the  ugliest  books 
he  had  ever  seen. 

"  But,"  I  cried,  "  you've  no  idea  how  scarce  it 
is!  It's  worth— " 

He  laughed. 

I  perceived  that  I  must  begin  life  again, 
and  I  began  it  again,  sustained  in  my  first  ef- 
forts by  the  all-pervading  atmosphere  of  ardour. 
My  new  intimates  were  not  only  keenly  apprecia- 
tive of  beauty,  they  were  bent  on  creating  it. 
They  dreamed  of  great  art-works,  lovely  compo- 
sitions, impassioned  song.  Music  and  painting 
they  were  familiar  with,  and  from  me  they  were 
serenely  sure  of  literature.  The  glorious  accent 
with  which  they  clothed  that  word — literature! 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  41 

Aware  beforehand  of  my  authority,  my  enthu- 
siasm, they  accepted  me  with  quick,  warm  sym- 
pathy as  a  fellow-idealist.  Then  they  desired  to 
know  what  I  was  engaged  upon,  what  my  aims 
were,  and  other  facts  exceedingly  difficult  to 
furnish. 

It  happened  that  the  most  popular  of  all 
popular  weeklies  had  recently  given  a  prize  of  a 
thousand  pounds  for  a  sensational  serial.  When 
the  serial  had  run  its  course,  the  editor  offered 
another  prize  of  twenty  guineas  for  the  best 
humorous  condensation  of  it  in  two  thousand 
words.  I  thought  I  might  try  for  that,  but  I 
feared  that  my  friends  would  not  consider  it 
"  art."  I  was  mistaken.  They  pointed  out  that 
caricature  was  a  perfectly  legitimate  form  of  art, 
often  leading  to  much  original  beauty,  and  they 
urged  me  to  enter  the  lists.  They  read  the  novel 
in  order  the  better  to  enjoy  the  caricature  of  it, 
and  when,  after  six.  evenings'  labour,  my  work 
was  done,  they  fiercely  exulted  in  it.  Out  of 
the  fulness  of  technical  ignorance  they  predicted 
with  certainty  that  I  should  win  the  prize. 

Here  again  life  plagiarized  the  sentimental 
novel,  for  I  did  win  the  guineas.  My  friends 
were  delighted,  but  they  declined  to.  admit  a 


42  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

particle  of  surprise.    Their  belief  in  what  I  could 
do  kept  me  awake  at  nights. 

This  was  my  first  pen-money,  earned  within 
two  months  of  my  change  of  air.  I  felt  that  the 
omen  was  favourable. 


V 

NOW  I  come  to  the  humiliating  part  of 
my  literary  career,  the  period  of  what 
in  Fleet  Street  is  called  "  free-lancing." 
I  use  the  term  "  humiliating "  deliberately.  A 
false  aureole  of  romance  encircles  the  head  of 
that  miserable  opportunist,  the  free-lance.  I  re- 
member I  tried  to  feel  what  a  glorious  thing  it 
was  to  be  a  free-lance,  dependent  on  none  (but 
dependent  on  all),  relying  always  on  one's  own 
invention  and  ingenuity,  poised  always  to  seize 
the  psychological  moment,  and  gambling  for  suc- 
cess with  the  calm  (so  spurious)  of  a  dicer  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  Sometimes  I  deceived 
myself  into  complacency,  but  far  more  often  I 
realized  the  true  nature  of  the  enterprise  and  set 
my  teeth  to  endure  Jhe  spiritual  shame  of  it. 
The  free-lance  is  a  tramp  touting  for  odd  jobs ;  a 
pedlar  crying  stuff  which  is  bought  usually  in  de- 
fault of  better;  a  producer  endeavouring  to  sup- 
ply a  market  of  whose  conditions  he  is  in  igno- 
rance more  or  less  complete;  a  commercial 
43 


44  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

traveller  liable  constantly  to  the  insolence  of  an 
elegant  West  End  draper's  "  buyer."  His  atti- 
tude is  in  essence  a  fawning  attitude ;  it  must  be 
so ;  he  is  the  poor  relation,  the  doff -hat,  the  ready- 
for-anything.  He  picks  up  the  crumbs  that  fall 
from  the  table  of  the  "  staff  " — the  salaried,  jeal- 
ous, intriguing  staff — or  he  sits  down,  honoured, 
when  the  staff  has  finished.  He  never  goes  to 
bed ;  he  dares  not ;  if  he  did,  a  crumb  would  fall. 
His  experience  is  as  degrading  as  a  competitive 
examination,  and  only  less  degrading  than  that 
of  the  black-and-white  artist  who  trudges  Fleet 
Street  with  a  portfolio  under  his  arm.  And  the 
shame  of  the  free-lance  is  none  the  less  real  be- 
cause he  alone  witnesses  it — he  and  the  post- 
man, that  postman  with  elongated  missive,  that 
herald  of  ignominy,  that  dismaying  process- 
server,  who  raps  the  rap  of  apprehension  and 
probable  doom  six,  eight,  and  even  twelve  times 
per  diem! 

The  popular  paper  that  had  paid  me  twenty 
guineas  for  being  facetious  expressed  a  polite 
willingness  to  consider  my  articles,  and  I  began 
to  turn  the  life  of  a  law-office  into  literature; 
my  provincial  experience  had  taught  me  the 
trick.  Here  was  I  engaged  all  day  in  drawing 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  45 

up  bills  of  costs  that  would  impose  on  a  taxing- 
master  to  the  very  last  three-and-fourpence ;  and 
there  was  the  public  in  whose  chaotic  mind  a 
lawyer's  bill  existed  as  a  sort  of  legend,  hiero- 
glyphic and  undecipherable.  What  more  natural 
than  a  brief  article — "  How  a  bill  of  costs  is 
drawn  up,"  a  trifling  essay  of  three  hundred 
words  over  which  I  laboured  for  a  couple  of 
evenings?  It  was  accepted,  printed,  and  with  a 
postal  order  for  ten  shillings  on  the  ensuing 
Thursday  I  saw  the  world  opening  before  me 
like  a  flower.  The  pathos  of  my  sanguine  igno- 
rance! I  followed  up  this  startling  success  with 
a  careful  imitation  of  it — "  How  a  case  is  pre- 
pared for  trial,"  and  that  too  brought  its  ten 
shillings.  But  the  vein  suddenly  ceased.  My 
fledgling  fancy  could  do  no  more  with  law,  and 
I  cast  about  in  futile  blindness  for  other  subjects. 
I  grew  conscious  for  the  first  time  of  my  lack  of 
technical  skill.  My  facility  seemed  to  leave  me, 
and  my  self-confidence. ,  Every  night  I  laboured 
dully  and  obstinately,  excogitating,  inventing, 
grinding  out,  bent  always  to  the  squalid  and 
bizarre  tastes  of  the  million,  and  ever  striving 
after  "  catchiness  "  and  "  actuality."  My  soul,  in 
the  arrogance  of  a  certain  achievement,  glances 


46 

back  furtively,  with  loathing,  at  that  period  of 
emotional  and  intellectual  dishonour.  The  one 
bright  aspect  of  it  is  that  I  wrote  everything  with 
a  nice  regard  for  English ;  I  would  lavish  a  night 
on  a  few  paragraphs;  and  years  of  this  penal 
servitude  left  me  with  a  dexterity  in  the  handling 
of  sentences  that  still  surprises  the  possessor  of 
it.  I  have  heard  of  Fleet  Street  hacks  who 
regularly  produce  sixty  thousand  words  a  week; 
but  I  well  know  that  there  are  not  many  men 
who  can  come  fresh  to  a  pile  of  new  books,  tear 
the  entrails  out  of  them,  and  write  a  fifteen- 
hundred-word  causerie  on  them,  passably 
stylistic,  all  inside  sixty  minutes.  This  means 
skill,  and  I  am  proud  of  it.  But  my  confessions 
as  a  reviewer  will  come  later. 

No !  Free-lancing  was  not  precisely  a  triumph 
for  me.  Call  it  my  purgatorio.  I  shone  some- 
times with  a  feeble  flicker,  in  half-crown  para- 
graphs, and  in  jumpy  articles  under  alliterative 
titles  that  now  and  then  flared  on  a  pink  or  yel- 
low contents-bill.  But  I  can  state  with  some 
certainty  that  my  earnings  in  the  mass  did  not 
exceed  threepence  an  hour.  During  all  this  time 
I  was  continually  spurred  by  the  artists  around 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  47 

me,  who  naively  believed  in  me,  and  who  were 
cognizant  only  of  my  successes.  I  never  spoke 
of  defeat;  I  used  to  retire  to  my  room  with  re- 
jected stuff  as  impassive  as  a  wounded  Indian; 
while  opening  envelopes  at  breakfast  I  had  the 
most  perfect  command  of  my  features.  Mere 
vanity  always  did  and  always  will  prevent  me 
from  acknowledging  a  reverse  at  the  moment; 
not  till  I  have  retrieved  my  position  can  I  refer 
to  a  discomfiture.  Consequently,  my  small 
world  regarded  me  as  much  more  successful 
than  I  really  was.  Had  I  to  live  again,  whicK 
Apollo  forbid,  I  would  pursue  the  same 
policy. 

During  all  this  time,  too,  I  was  absorbing 
French  fiction  incessantly ;  in  French  fiction  I  in- 
clude the  work  of  Turgenev,  because  I  read  him 
always  in  French  translations.  Turgenev,  the 
brothers  de  Goncourt,  and  de  Maupassant  were 
my  gods.  I  accepted  their  canons,  and  they  filled 
me  with  a  general  s$orn  of  English  fiction  which 
I  have  never  quite  lost.  From  the  composition  of 
*  bits '  articles  I  turned  to  admire  "  Fathers  and 
Children  "  or  "  Une  Vie,"  and  the  violence  of  the 
contrast  never  struck  me  at  the  time.  I  did  not 


48  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

regard  myself  as  an  artist,  or  as  emotional  by  tem- 
perament. My  ambition  was  to  be  a  journalist 
merely — cool,  smart,  ingenious,  equal  to  every 
emergency.  I  prided  myself  on  my  impassivity. 
I  was  acquainted  with  men  who  wept  at  fine 
music — I  felt  sure  that  Saint  Cecilia  and  the 
heavenly  choir  could  not  draw  a  single  tear  from 
my  journalistic  eye.  I  failed  to  perceive  that  my 
appreciation  of  French  fiction,  and  the  harangues 
on  fiction  which  I  delivered  to  my  intimates, 
were  essentially  emotional  in  character,  and  I 
forgot  that  the  sight  of  a  successful  dramatist 
before  the  curtain  on  a  first-night  always  caused 
me  to  shake  with  a  mysterious  and  profound 
agitation.  I  mention  these  facts  to  show  how  I 
misunderstood,  or  ignored,  the  progress  of  my 
spiritual  development.  A  crisis  was  at  hand.  I 
suffered  from  insomnia  and  other  intellectual 
complaints,  and  went  to  consult  a  physician  who 
was  also  a  friend. 

"  You  know,"  he  said,  in  the  course  of  talk, 
"  you  are  one  of  the  most  highly-strung  men  I 
have  ever  met." 

When  I  had  recovered  from  my  stupefaction, 
I  glowed  with  pride.  What  a  fine  thing  to  be 
highly-strung,  nervously  organized!  I  saw  my- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  49 

self  in  a  new  light ;  I  thought  better  of  myself ;  I 
rather  looked  down  on  cool,  ingenious  journalists. 
Perhaps  I  dimly  suspected  that  Fleet  Street  was 
not  to  be  the  end  of  all  things  for  me.  It  was 
soon  afterwards  that  the  artists  whom  I  had 
twitted  about  their  temperament  accused  me  of 
sharing  it  with  them  to  the  full.  Another  sur- 
prise! I  was  in  a  state  of  ferment  then.  But  I 
had  acquired  such  a  momentum  in  the  composi- 
tion of  articles  destined  to  rejection  that  I  con- 
tinued throughout  this  crisis  to  produce  them 
with  a  regularity  almost  stupid.  My  friends  be- 
gan to  inquire  into  the  nature  of  my  ultimate 
purpose.  They  spoke  of  a  large  work,  and  I 
replied  that  I  had  no  spare  time.  None 
could  question  my  industry.  "  Why  don't  you 
write  a  novel  on  Sundays?  "  one  of  them  sug- 
gested. 

The  idea  was  grandiose.  To  conceive  such  an 
idea  was  a  proof  of  imagination.  And  the  air 
with  which  these  enthusiasts  said  these  things 
was  entirely  splendid  and  magnificent.  But  I 
was  just  then  firmly  convinced  that  I  had  no  vo- 
cation for  the  novel;  I  had  no  trace  of  a  desire 
to  emulate  Turgenev.  Again  and  again  my  fine 
enthusiasts  returned  to  the  charge,  urged  on  by 


50  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

I  know  not  what  instinct.  At  last,  to  please 
them,  to  quieten  them,  I  promised  to  try  to 
write  a  short  story.  Without  too  much  difficulty 
I  concocted  one  concerning  an  artist's  model,  and 
sent  it  to  a  weekly  which  gives  a  guinea  each 
week  for  a  prize  story.  My  tale  won  the  guinea. 

"  There !  We  told  you  so ! "  was  the  chorus. 
And  I  stood  convicted  of  underestimating 
my  own  powers;  fault  rare  enough  in  my 
career! 

However,  I  insisted  that  the  story  was  des- 
picably bad,  a  commercial  product,  and  the  re- 
ply was  that  I  ought  next  to  write  one  for  art's 
sake.  Instead,  I  wrote  one  for  morality's  sake. 
It  was  a  story  with  a  lofty  purpose,  dealing  with 
the  tragedy  of  a  courtesan's  life.  (No,  I  had  not 
then  read  "  Splendeurs  et  Miseres  des  Courti- 
sanes.")  A  prominent  philanthropist  with  a 
tendency  to  faddism,  who  for  morality's  sake 
was  running  a  monthly  magazine,  was  much  im- 
pressed by  my  tale,  and  after  some  trouble — the 
contributors  were  supposed  to  contribute  con 
amore — I  got  another  guinea.  This  story  only 
pleased  me  for  a  few  weeks;  its  crudity  was  too 
glaring.  But  I  continued  to  write  short  stories, 
and  several  of  them  appeared  in  halfpenny  even- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  51 

ing  papers.  Gaining  in  skill,  I  aimed  political 
skits  in  narrative  form  at  the  more  exclusive, 
the  consciously  superior,  penny  evening  papers, 
and  one  or  two  of  these  hit  the  mark.  I  ad- 
mired the  stuff  greatly.  Lo,  I  had  risen  from  a 
concocter  of  'bits'  articles  to  be  the  scorpion- 
sting  of  cabinet  ministers!  My  self-confidence 
began  to  return. 

Then,  one  day,  one  beneficent  and  adorable 
day,  my  brain  was  visited  by  a  Plot.  I  had  a 
prevision  that  I  was  about  to  write  a  truly  excel- 
lent short  story.  I  took  incredible  pains  to  be 
realistic,  stylistic,  and  all  the  other  istics,  and 
the  result  amazed  me.  I  knew  that  at  last  I 
had  accomplished  a  good  thing — I  knew  by 
the  glow  within  me,  the  emotional  fatigue,  the 
vista  of  sweet  labour  behind  me.  What  moved 
me  to  despatch  this  jewel,  this  bit  of  caviare- 
to-the-general,  to  the  editor  of  a  popular  weekly 
with  a  circulation  of  a  quarter  of  a  million,  I 
cannot  explain.  But*  so  I  did.  The  editor 
returned  it  with  a  note  to  say  that  he  liked  the 
plot,  but  the  style  was  below  his  standard.  I 
laughed,  and,  more  happily  inspired,  sent  it  to 
the  Yellow  Book,  where  it  duly  appeared.  The 
Yellow  Book  was  then  in  apogee.  Several 


52  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

fiercely  literary  papers  singled  out  my  beautiful 
story  for  especial  praise. 

"  By  heaven! "  I  said,  "  I  will  write  a  novel." 
It  was  a  tremendous  resolution. 

I  saw  that  I  could  write. 


VI 

BUT  before  continuing  the  narration  of 
my  adventures  in  fiction,  I  must  proceed 
a  little  further  in  the  dusty  tracks  of 
journalism.  When  I  had  laboured  sordidly 
and  for  the  most  part  ineffectively  as  a  free- 
lance for  two  or  three  years,  I  became,  with 
surprising  suddenness,  the  assistant-editor  of  a 
ladies'  paper.  The  cause  of  this  splendid  meta- 
morphosis was  sadly  unromantic.  I  had  not 
bombarded  the  paper,  from  the  shelter  of  a 
pseudonym,  with  articles  of  unexampled  bril- 
liance. The  editor  had  not  invited  his  mys- 
terious and  talented  contributor  into  the 
editorial  sanctum,  and  there  informed  him  that 
his  exclusive  services,  at  a  generous  salary, 
were  deemed  absolutely  essential  to  the  future 
welfare  of  the  organ  which  he  had  hitherto 
assisted  only  on  occasion.  I  had  never  written 
a  line  for  the  paper,  nor  for  any  ladies'  paper. 
I  obtained  the  situation  by  "  influence,"  and  that 
of  the  grossest  kind.  All  that  I  personally  did 

53 


54  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

was  to  furnish  a  list  of  the  newspapers  and 
periodicals  to  which  I  had  contributed,  and 
some  specimens  of  my  printed  work.  These 
specimens  proved  rather  more  than  satisfactory. 
The  editor  adored  smartness;  smartness  was 
the  "note"  of  his  paper;  and  he  discovered 
several  varieties  of  smartness  in  my  productions. 
At  our  first  interview,  and  always  afterwards, 
his  attitude  towards  me  was  full  of  appreciation 
and  kindness.  The  post  was  a  good  one,  a 
hundred  and  fifty  a  year  for  one  whole  day  and 
four  half-days  a  week.  Yet  I  was  afraid  to 
take  it.  I  was  afraid  to  exchange  two  hundred 
a  year  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  and  half  my  time, 
I  who  ardently  wished  to  be  a  journalist  and 
to  have  leisure  for  the  imitation  of  our  lady 
George  Sand!  In  the  end  I  was  hustled  into 
the  situation.  My  cowardice  was  shameful; 
but  in  recording  it  I  am  not  unconscious  of  the 
fact  that  truth  makes  for  piquancy. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  shall  have  to  leave 
you  at  Christmas,  sir." 

"  Indeed ! "  exclaimed  the  lawyer  who  ad- 
mired Browning.  "How  is  that?" 

"  I  am  going  on  to  the  staff  of  a  paper." 

Perhaps  I  have  never  felt  prouder  than  when 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  55 

I  uttered  those  words.  My  pride  must  have 
been  disgusting.  This  was  the  last  time  I  ever 
said  "  sir "  to  any  man  under  the  rank  of  a 
knight.  The  defection  of  a  reliable  clerk  who 
combined  cunning  in  the  preparation  of  costs 
with  a  hundred  and  thirty  words  a  minute  at; 
shorthand  was  decidedly  a  blow  to  my  excellent; 
employer;  good  costs  clerks  are  rarer  than  true 
poets;  but  he  suffered  it  with  impassive  stoi- 
cism; I  liked  him  for  that. 

On  a  New  Year's  Day  I  strolled  along  Picca- 
dilly to  the  first  day's  work  on  my  paper.  "  My 
paper" — O  the  joyful  sound!  But  the  boats 
were  burnt  up;  their  ashes  were  even  cool;  and 
my  mind,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  bliss,  was 
vexed  by  grave  apprehensions.  Suppose  the 
paper  to  expire,  as  papers  often  did!  I  knew 
that  the  existence  of  this  particular  paper  was 
precarious;  its  foundations  were  not  fixed  in 
the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time — it  was 
two  years  old.  Nevertheless,  and  indisputably 
and  solely,  I  was  at  last  a  journalist,  and  en- 
titled so  to  describe  myself  in  parish  registers, 
county  court  summonses,  jury  papers,  and  in- 
come-tax returns.  In  six  months  I  might  be  a 
tramp  sleeping  in  Trafalgar  Square,  but  on  that 


56  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

gorgeous  day  I  was  a  journalist;  nay,  I  was 
second  in  command  over  a  cohort  of  women 
whose  cleverness,  I  trusted,  would  be  surpassed 
only  by  their  charm. 

The  office  was  in  the  West  End — index  of 
smartness;  one  arrived  at  ten  thirty  or  so,  and 
ascended  to  the  suite  in  a  lift.  One  smoked 
cigars  and  cigarettes  incessantly.  There  was  no 
discipline,  and  no  need  of  discipline,  since  the 
indoor  staff  consisted  only  of  the  editor,  myself, 
and  the  editor's  lady-secretary.  The  contrast 
between  this  and  the  exact  ritual  of  a  solicitor's 
office  was  marked  and  delightful.  In  an  adjoin- 
ing suite  on  the  same  floor  an  eminent  actress 
resided,  and  an  eminent  actor  strolled  in  to  us, 
grandiosely,  during  the  morning,  accepted  a 
cigar  and  offered  a  cigarette  (according  to  his 
frugal  custom),  chatted  grandiosely,  and  grandi- 
osely departed.  Parcels  were  constantly  ar- 
riving— books,  proofs,  process-blocks,  samples 
of  soap  and  of  corsets:  this  continuous  pro- 
cession of  parcels  impressed  me  as  much  as 
anything.  From  time  to  time  well-dressed  and 
alert  women  called,  to  correct  proofs,  to  sub- 
mit drawings,  or  to  scatter  excuses.  This  was 
"Evadne,"  who  wrote  about  the  toilet;  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  57 

was  "  Angelique,"  who  did  the  cookery ;  the 
other  was  "  Enid,"  the  well-known  fashion 
artist.  In  each  case  I  was  of  course  introduced 
as  the  new  assistant-editor;  they  were  ador- 
able, without  exception.  At  one  o'clock,  having 
apparently  done  little  but  talk  and  smoke,  we 
went  out,  the  Editor  and  I,  to  lunch  at  the  Cri. 

"  This,"  I  said  to  myself  quite  privately,  "  this 
may  be  a  novel  by  Balzac,  but  it  is  not  my 
notion  of  journalism." 

The  doings  of  the  afternoon,  however,  bore 
a  closer  resemblance  to  my  notion  of  journalism. 
That  day  happened  to  be  press-day,  and  I  per- 
ceived that  we  gradually  became  very  busy. 
Messenger-boys  waited  while  I  wrote  para- 
graphs to  accompany  portraits,  or  while  I  regu- 
larized the  syntax  of  a  recipe  for  sole  %  la 
Normande,  or  while  I  ornamented  two  naked 
lines  from  the  "  Morning  Post  "  with  four  lines  of 
embroidery.  The  editor  was  enchanted  with  my 
social  paragraphs;  he  s^id  I  was  born  to  it,  and 
perhaps  I  was.  I  innocently  asked  in  what  part 
of  the  paper  they  were  to  shine. 

"  Gwendolen's  column,"  he  replied. 

"Who  is  Gwendolen?"  I  demanded.  Weeks 
before,  I  had  admired  Gwendolen's  breadth  of 


58  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

view  and  worldly  grasp  of  things,  qualities  rare 
in  a  woman. 

"  You  are,"  he  said,  "  and  I  am.  It's  only 
an  office  signature." 

Now,  that  was  what  I  called  journalism.  I 
had  been  taken  in,  but  I  was  glad  to  have  been 
taken  in. 

At  four  o'clock  he  began  frantically  to  dictate 
the  weekly  London  Letter  which  he  contributed 
to  an  Indian  newspaper;  the  copy  caught  the 
Indian  mail  at  six.  And  this  too  was  what  I 
called  journalism.  I  felt  myself  to  be  in  my 
element;  I  lived.  At  an  hour  which  I  forget  we 
departed  together  to  the  printers,  and  finished 
off.  It  was  late  when  the  paper  "went  down." 
The  next  morning  the  lady-secretary  handed  to 
me  the  first  rough  folded  "  pull "  of  the  issue, 
and  I  gazed  at  it  as  a  mother  might  gaze  at  her 
firstborn. 

"But  is  this  all?"  ran  my  thoughts.  The 
fact  was,  I  had  expected  some  process  of  initia- 
tion. I  had  looked  on  "  journalism  "  as  a  sort  of 
temple  of  mysteries  into  which,  duly  impressed, 
I  should  be  ceremoniously  guided.  I  was  called 
assistant-editor  for  the  sake  of  grandiloquence, 
but  of  course  I  knew  I  was  chiefly  a  mere  sub- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  59 

editor,  and  I  had  anticipated  that  the  sub-edi- 
torial craft  would  be  a  complex  technical  busi- 
ness requiring  long  study  and  practice.  On  the 
contrary,  there  seemed  to  me  to  be  almost 
nothing  in  its  technique.  The  tricks  of  making- 
up,  making-ready,  measuring  blocks,  running- 
round,  cutting,  saving  a  line,  and  so  on:  my 
chief  assumed  in  the  main  that  I  understood  all 
these,  and  I  certainly  did  grasp  them  instinc- 
tively; they  appeared  childishly  simple.  Years 
afterwards,  a  contributor  confided  to  me  that 
the  editor  had  told  her  that  he  taught  me  nothing 
after  the  first  day,  and  that  I  was  a  born  journal- 
ist. I  do  not  seriously  think  that  I  was  a  born 
journalist,  and  I  mention  this  detail,  not  from 
any  vain-glory  over  a  trifle,  but  to  show  that  the 
arcana  of  journalism  partake  of  the  nature  of  an 
imposture.  The  same  may  be  said  of  all  pro- 
fessional arcana,  even  those  of  politics  or  of  the 
swell-mob. 

In  a  word,  I  was  a  journalist — but  I  felt  just 
the  same  as  before. 

I  vaguely  indicated  my  feelings  on  this  point 
to  the  chief. 

"  Ah !  "  he  said.  "  But  you  know  you'd  been, 
through  the  mill  before  you  came  here." 


60  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

So  I  had  been  through  the  mill!  Writing 
articles  at  night  and  getting  them  back  the  next 
morning  but  one,  for  a  year  or  two — that  was 
going  through  the  mill!  Let  it  be  so,  then. 
When  other  men  envied  my  position,  and  ex- 
pressed their  opinion  that  I  had  "  got  on  to  a 
soft  thing,"  I  indicated  that  the  present  was  the 
fruit  of  the  past,  and  that  I  had  been  through  the 
mill. 

Journalism  for  women,  by  women  under  the 
direction  of  men,  is  an  affair  at  once  anxious, 
agreeable  and  delicate  for  the  men  who  direct. 
It  is  a  journalism  by  itself,  apart  from  other 
journalisms.  And  it  is  the  only  journalism  that 
I  intimately  know.  The  commercial  side  of  it, 
the  queer  financial  basis  of  it,  have  a  peculiar 
interest,  but  my  scheme  does  not  by  any  means 
include  the  withdrawal  of  those  curtains.  I  am 
concerned  with  letters,  and  letters,  I  fear,  have 
little  connection  with  women's  journalism.  I 
learnt  nothing  of  letters  in  that  office,  save  a  few 
of  the  more  obvious  journalistic  devices,  but  I 
learnt  a  good  deal  about  frocks,  household  man- 
agement, and  the  secret  nature  of  women,  es- 
pecially the  secret  nature  of  women.  As 
for  frocks,  I  have  sincerely  tried  to  forget  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  61 

branch  of  human  knowledge;  nevertheless  the 
habit,  acquired  then,  of  glancing  first  at  a 
woman's  skirt  and  her  shoes,  has  never  left  me. 
My  apprenticeship  to  frocks  was  studded  with 
embarrassing  situations,  of  which  I  will  mention 
only  one.  It  turns  upon  some  designs  for  a 
layette.  A  layette,  perhaps  I  ought  to  explain, 
is  an  outfit  for  a  new-born  babe,  and  naturally 
it  is  prepared  in  advance  of  the  stranger's  arrival. 
Underneath  a  page  of  layette  illustrations  I 
once  put  the  legend,  correct  in  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  thousand — but 
this  was  the  thousandth — Cut-to-measure  patterns 
supplied.  The  solecism  stands  to  all  eternity 
against  me  on  the  file  of  the  paper;  and  the 
recollection  of  it,  like  the  recollection  of  a 
gaucherie,  is  persistently  haunting. 

And  here  I  shall  quit  for  a  time  the  feminine 
atmosphere,  and  the  path  which  I  began  by 
calling  dusty,  but  which  is  better  called  flowery. 
My  activity  in  that  path  showed  no  further  de- 
velopment until  after  I  had  written  my  first 
novel. 


VII 

{ {  ^^^  Y  heaven ! "   I  said,  "  I  will  write  a 
••^  novel!" 

••••^  And  I  sat  down  to  my  oaken  bureau 
with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  resolved  to  com- 
mit a  stupendous  crime.  Perhaps  indeed  it  was 
a  crime,  this  my  first  serious  challenge  to  a 
neglectful  and  careless  world.  At  any  rate  it 
was  meant  to  be  the  beginning  of  the  end,  the 
end  being  twofold — fame  and  a  thousand  a 
year.  You  must  bear  well  in  mind  that  I  was 
by  no  means  the  ordinary  person,  and  my  novel 
was  by  no  means  to  be  the  ordinary  novel.  In 
these  cases  the  very  essence  of  the  situation  is 
always  that  one  is  not  ordinary.  I  had  just  dis- 
covered that  I  could  write — and  when  I  use  the 
term  "  write  "  here,  I  use  it  in  a  special  sense, 
to  be  appreciated  only  by  those  elect  who  can 
themselves  "write,"  and  difficult  of  comprehen- 
sion by  all  others.  I  had  had  a  conte — ex- 
quisitely Gallic  as  to  spirit  and  form — in  the 
"  Yellow  Book,"  and  that  conte  had  been  lauded 

62 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  63 

in  the  "  South  Audley  Street  Gazette  "  or  some 
organ  of  destructive  criticism.  My  friends  be- 
lieved in  Art,  themselves,  and  me.  I  believed  in 
myself,  Art,  and  them.  Could  any  factor  be 
lacking  to  render  the  scene  sublime  and  historic? 
So  I  sat  down  to  write  my  first  novel,  under 
the  sweet  influences  of  the  de  Goncourts,  Tur- 
genev,  Flaubert,  and  de  Maupassant.  It  was 
to  be  entirely  unlike  all  English  novels  except 
those  of  one  author,  whose  name  I  shall  not 
mention  now,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  afore- 
time made  my  admiration  of  that  author  very 
public.  I  clearly  remember  that  the  purpose 
uppermost  in  my  mind  was  to  imitate  what  I 
may  call  the  physical  characteristics  of  French 
novels.  There  were  to  be  no  poetical  quota- 
tions in  my  novel,  no  titles  to  the  chapters;  the 
narrative  was  to  be  divided  irregularly  into  sec- 
tions by  Roman  numerals  only;  and  it  was  in- 
dispensable that  a  ..  certain  proportion  of  these 
sections  should  begin  or  end  abruptly.  As 
thus,  for  a  beginning : — "  Gerald  suddenly 
changed  the  conversation,  and  taking  the  final 
match  from  his  match-box  at  last  agreed  to  light 
a  cigar."  And  for  an  ending : — "  Her  tremulous 
eyes  sought  his;  breathing  a  sigh  she  murmured 


64  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

..."  O  succession  of  dots,  charged  with 
significance  vague  but  tremendous,  there  were  to 
be  hundreds  of  you  in  my  novel,  because  you 
play  so  important  a  part  in  the  literature  of  the 
country  of  Victor  Hugo  and  M.  Loubet!  So 
much  for  the  physical  characteristics.  To  come 
nearer  to  the  soul  of  it,  my  novel  was  to  be  a 
mosaic  consisting  exclusively  of  Flaubert's 
mots  justes — it  was  to  be  mois  justes  composed 
into  the  famous  ecriture  artiste  of  the  de  Gon- 
courts.  The  sentences  were  to  perform  the 
trick  of  "  the  rise  and  fall."  The  adjectives  were 
to  have  colour,  the  verbs  were  to  have  colour, 
and  perhaps  it  was  a  sine  qua  non  that  even 
the  pronouns  should  be  prismatic — I  forget. 
And  all  these  effects  were  to  be  obtained  without 
the  most  trifling  sacrifice  of  truth.  There  was 
to  be  no  bowing  in  the  house  of  the  Rimmon 
of  sentimentality.  Life  being  grey,  sinister, 
and  melancholy,  my  novel  must  be  grey,  sin- 
ister, and  melancholy.  As  a  matter  of  strict 
fact,  life  deserved  none  of  these  epithets;  I  was 
having  a  very  good  time;  but  at  twenty-seven 
one  is  captious,  and  liable  to  err  in  judgment 
liability  which  fortunately  disappears  at 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  65 

thirty-five  or  so.  No  startling  events  were  to 
occur  in  my  novel,  nor  anything  out  of  the  way 

that   might   bring   the   blush   of   shame   to   the 

» 

modesty  of  nature;  no  ingenious  combinations, 
no  dramatic  surprises,  and  above  all  no  coinci- 
dences. It  was  to  be  the  Usual  miraculously 
transformed  by  Art  into  the  Sublime. 

The  sole  liberty  that  I  might  permit  myself  in, 
handling  the  Usual  was  to  give  it  a  rhythmic 
contour — a  precious  distinction  in  those  Yeller- 
bocky  days. 

All  these  cardinal  points  being  settled,  I  passed 
to  the  business  of  choosing  a  subject.  Need  I  say 
that  I  chose  myself?  But,  in  obedience  to  my 
philosophy,  I  made  myself  a  failure.  I  regarded 
my  hero  with  an  air  of  "  There,  but  for  the 
grace  of  God,  goes  me!"  I  decided  that  he 
should  go  through  most  of  my  own  experiences, 
but  that  instead  of  fame  and  a  thousand  a  year 
he  should  arrive  ultimately  at  disillusion  and  a 
desolating  suburban*  domesticity.  I  said  I 
would  call  my  novel  "In  the  Shadow,'*  a  title 
suggested  to  me  by  the  motto  of  Balzac's 
"  Country  Doctor " — "  For  a  wounded  heart, 
shadow  and  silence."  It  was  to  be  all  very 


66  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

dolorous,  this  Odyssey  of  a  London  clerk  who 

But  I  must  not  disclose  any  detail  of  the 

plot. 

So  I  sat  down,  and  wrote  on  a  fair  quarto 
sheet,  "In  the  Shadow,"  and  under  that,  "I." 
It  was  a  religious  rite,  an  august  and  imposing 
ceremonial;  and  I  was  the  officiating  priest. 
In  the  few  fleeting  instants  between  the  tracing 
of  the  "  I "  and  the  tracing  of  the  first  word 
of  the  narrative,  I  felt  happy  and  proud;  but 
immediately  the  fundamental  brain-work  began, 
I  lost  nearly  all  my  confidence.  With  every, 
stroke  the  illusion  grew  thinner,  more  remote. 
I  perceived  that  I  could  not  become  Flaubert 
by  taking  thought,  and  this  rather  obvious  truth! 
rushed  over  me  as  a  surprise.  I  knew  what  I 
wanted  to  do,  and  I  could  not  do  it.  I  felt,  but 
I  could  not  express.  My  sentences  would  per- 
sist in  being  damnably  Mudiesque.  The  mots 
justes  hid  themselves  exasperatingly  behind  a 
cloud.  The  successions  of  dots  looked  merely 
fatuous.  The  charm,  the  poetry,  the  distinc- 
tion, the  inevitableness,  the  originality,  the  force, 
and  the  invaluable  rhythmic  contour — these 
were  anywhere  save  on  my  page.  All  writers 
are  familiar  with  the  dreadful  despair  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  67 

ensues  when  a  composition,  on  perusal, 
obstinately  presents  itself  as  a  series  of  little 
systems  of  words  joined  by  conjunctions  and 
so  forth,  something  like  this — subject,  predi- 
cate, object,  but,  subject,  predicate,  object. 
Pronoun,  however,  predicate,  negative,  infinitive 
verb.  Nevertheless,  participle,  accusative,  sub- 
ject, predicate,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  for  evermore.  I 
suffered  that  despair.  The  proper  remedy  is  to 
go  to  the  nearest  bar  and  have  a  drink,  or  to 
read  a  bit  of  "  Comus  "  or  "  Urn-Burial,"  but  at 
that  time  I  had  no  skill  in  weathering  anti-cy- 
clones, and  I  drove  forward  like  a  sinking  steamer 
in  a  heavy  sea. 

And  this  was  what  it  was,  in  serious  earnest, 
to  be  an  author!  For  I  reckon  that  in  writing 
the  first  chapter  of  my  naturalistic  novel,  I  form- 
ally became  an  author;  I  had  undergone  a  cer- 
tain apprenticeship.  I  didn't  feel  like  an 
author,  no  more  than  I  had  felt  like  a  journalist 
on  a  similar  occasion/  Indeed,  far  less:  I  felt 
like  a  fool,  an  incompetent  ass.  I  seemed  to 
have  an  idea  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
literature,  that  literature  was  a  mirage,  or  an 
effect  of  hypnotism,  or  a  concerted  fraud.  After 
all,  I  thought,  what  in  the  name  of  common  sense 


68  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

is  the  use  of  telling  this  silly  ordinary  story  of 
everyday  life?  Where  is  the  point?  What  is 
art,  anyway,  and  all  this  chatter  about  truth  to 
life,  and  all  this  rigmarole  of  canons? 

I  finished  the  chapter  that  night,  hurriedly, 
perfunctorily,  and  only  because  I  had  sworn  to 
finish  it.  Then,  in  obedience  to  an  instinct  which 
all  Grub  Street  has  felt,  I  picked  out  the  correct 
"  Yellow  Book  "  from  a  shelf  and  read  my  beau- 
tiful story  again.  That  enheartened  me  a  little, 
restored  my  faith  in  the  existence  of  art,  and 
suggested  the  comfortable  belief  that  things 
were  not  perhaps  as  bad  as  they  seemed. 

"  Well,  how's  the  novel  getting  on? "  my 
friend  the  wall-paper  enthusiast  inquired  jovially 
at  supper. 

"Oh,  fine!"  I  said.  "It's  going  to  be  im- 
mense." 

Why  one  should  utter  these  frightful  and 
senseless  lies,  I  cannot  guess.  I  might  just  as 
well  have  spoken  the  precise  truth  to  him,  for  his 
was  a  soul  designed  by  providence  for  the  en- 
couragement of  others.  Still,  having  made  that 
remark,  I  added  in  my  private  ear  that  either 
the  novel  must  be  immense  or  I  must  perish  in 
the  attempt  to  make  it  so.  . 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  69 

In  six  months  I  had  written  only  about  thirty 
thousand  words,  and  I  felt  the  sort  of  elation 
that  probably  succeeds  six  months  on  a  tread- 
mill. But  one  evening,  in  the  midst  of  a  chap- 
ter, a  sudden  and  mysterious  satisfaction  began 
to  warm  my  inmost  being.  I  knew  that  that 
chapter  was  good  and  going  to  be  good.  I 
experienced  happiness  in  the  very  act  of  work. 
Emotion  and  technique  were  reconciled.  It  was 
as  if  I  had  surprisingly  come  upon  the  chart 
with  the  blood-red  cross  showing  where  the 
Spanish  treasure  was  buried.  I  dropped  my  pen, 
and  went  out  for  a  walk,  and  decided  to  give 
the  book  an  entirely  fresh  start.  I  carefully  read 
through  all  that  I  had  written.  It  was  bad, 
but  viewed  in  the  mass  it  produced  on  me  a  sort 
of  culminating  effect  which  I  had  not  anticipated. 
Conceive  the  poor  Usual  at  the  bottom  of  a 
flight  of  stairs,  and  the  region  of  the  Sublime  at 
the  top :  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  dragged  the 
haggard  thing  halfway  up,  and  that  it  lay  there, 
inert  but  safe,  awaiting  my  second  effort.  The 
next  night  I  braced  myself  to  this  second  effort, 
and  I  thought  that  I  succeeded. 

"We're  doing  the  trick,  Charlie,"  Edmund 
Kean  whispered  into  the  ear  of  his  son  during  a 


[70  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

poignant  scene  of  "Brutus."  And  in  the  very 
crisis  of  my  emotional  chapters,  while  my  hero 
was  rushing  fatally  to  the  nether  greyness  of 
the  suburbs  and  all  the  world  was  at  its  most 
sinister  and  most  melancholy,  I  said  to  myself 
with  glee:  "We're  doing  the  trick."  My 
moods  have  always  been  a  series  of  violent  con- 
trasts, and  I  was  now  just  as  uplifted  as  I  had 
before  been  depressed.  There  were  interludes 
of  doubt  and  difficulty,  but  on  the  whole  I  was 
charmed  with  my  novel.  It  would  be  a  des- 
picable affectation  to  disguise  the  fact  that  I 
deemed  it  a  truly  distinguished  piece  of  litera- 
ture, idiosyncratic,  finely  imaginative,  and  of 
rhythmic  contour.  As  I  approached  the  end, 
my  self-esteem  developed  in  a  crescendo.  I 
finished  the  tale,  having  sentenced  my  hero  to 
a  marriage  infallibly  disastrous,  at  three  o'clock 
one  morning.  I  had  laboured  for  twelve  hours 
without  intermission.  It  was  great,  this  spell; 
it  was  histrionic.  It  was  Dumas  over  again,  and 
the  roaring  French  forties. 

Nevertheless,  to  myself  I  did  not  yet  dare  to 
call  myself  an  artist.  I  lacked  the  courage  to 
believe  that  I  had  the  sacred  fire,  the  inborn 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  71 

and  not-to-be-acquired  vision.  It  seemed  im- 
possible that  this  should  be  so.  I  have  ridiculed 
the  whole  artist  tribe,  and,  in  the  pursuit  of  my 
vocation,  I  shall  doubtless  ridicule  them  again; 
but  never  seriously.  Nothing  is  more  deeply 
rooted  in  me  than  my  reverence  for  the  artistic 
faculty.  And  whenever  I  say,  "The  man's  an 
artist,"  I  say  it  with  an  instinctive  solemnity 
that  so  far  as  I  am  concerned  ends  all  discussion. 
Dared  I  utter  this  great  saying  to  my  shaving- 
mirror?  No,  I  repeat  that  I  dared  not.  More 
than  a  year  elapsed  before  the  little  incident 
described  at  the  commencement  of  these 
memoirs  provided  me  with  the  audacity  to  in- 
form the  author  of  "  In  the  Shadow  "  that  he  too 
belonged  to  the  weird  tribe  of  Benjamin. 

When  my  novel  had  been  typewritten  and  I 
read  it  in  cold  blood,  I  was  absolutely  unable  to 
decide  whether  it  was  very  good,  good,  medium, 
bad,  or  very  bad.  I  xould  not  criticize  it.  All 
I  knew  was  that  certain  sentences,  in  the  vein 
of  the  ecrifare  artiste,  persisted  beautifully  in 
my  mind,  like  fine  lines  from  a  favourite  poet. 
I  loosed  the  brave  poor  thing  into  the  world 
over  a  post-office  counter.  "What  chance  has 


$2  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

it,  in  the  fray?  "  I  exclaimed.  My  novel  had  be- 
come nothing  but  a  parcel.  Thus  it  went  in 
search  of  its  fate. 

I  have  described  the  composition  of  my  first 
book  in  detail  as  realistic  as  I  can  make  it, 
partly  because  a  few  years  ago  the  leading  nov- 
elists of  the  day  seemed  to  enter  into  a  conspiracy 
to  sentimentalize  the  first-book  episode  in  their 
brilliant  careers. 


VIII 

li^T  "JT   ^"ILL  you  step  this  way?  "  said  the 

%  i\i     publisher's   manager,   and   after 

coasting  by  many  shelves  loaded 

with  scores  of  copies  of  the  same  book  laid  flat 

in    piles — to    an    author    the    most    depressing 

sight    in   the   world — I   was   ushered    into    the 

sanctum,  the  star-chamber,  the  den,  the  web  of 

the  spider. 

I  beheld  the  publisher,  whose  name  is  a 
household  word  wherever  the  English  language 
is  written  for  posterity.  Even  at  that  time  his 
imprint  flamed  on  the  title-pages  of  one  or  two 
works  of  a  deathless  nature.  My  manuscript  lay 
on  an  occasional  table  by  his  side,  and  I  had  the 
curious  illusion  that  he  was  posing  for  his  photo- 
graph with  my  manuscript.  As  I  glanced  at  it 
I  could  not  help  thinking  that  its  presence  there 
bordered  on  the  miraculous.  I  had  parted  with 
it  at  a  post-office.  It  had  been  stamped,  sorted, 
chucked  into  a  van,  whirled  through  the  perilous 
traffic  of  London's  centre,  chucked  out  of  a  van, 

73 


74  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

sorted  again,  and  delivered  with  many  other 
similar  parcels  at  the  publisher's.  The  publisher 
had  said :  "  Send  this  to  So-and-so  to  read." 
Then  more  perils  by  road  and  rail,  more  risks  of 
extinction  and  disorientation.  Then  So-and-so, 
probably  a  curt  man,  with  a  palate  cloyed  by  the 
sickliness  of  many  manuscripts,  and  a  short  way 
with  new  authors,  had  read  it  or  pretended  to 
read  it.  Then  finally  the  third  ordeal  of  loco- 
motion. And  there  it  was,  I  saw  it  once  more, 
safe! 

;We  discussed  the  weather  and  new  reputa- 
tions. I  was  nervous,  and  I  think  the  publisher 
was  nervous,  too.  At  length,  in  a  manner  mys- 
terious and  inexplicable,  the  talk  shifted  to  my 
manuscript.  The  publisher  permitted  himself  a 
few  compliments  of  the  guarded  sort. 

"  But  there's  no  money  in  it,  you  know,"  he 
said. 

"  I  suppose  not,"  I  assented.  ("  You  are  an 
ass  for  assenting  to  that,"  I  said  to  myself.) 

"  I  invariably  lose  money  over  new  authors," 
he  remarked,  as  if  I  was  to  blame. 

"  You  didn't  lose  much  over  Mrs. ,"  I  re- 
plied, naming  one  of  his  notorious  successes. 


THE  TRUTF  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  75 

"Oh,  tee///"  he   said,   "of    coarse .    But 

I  didn't  make  so  much  as  you  think,  perhaps. 
Publishing  is  a  very  funny  business."  And  then 
he  added :  "  Do  you  think  your  novel  will  suc- 
ceed like  Mrs. 's?  " 

I  said  that  I  hoped  it  would. 

"  I'll  be  perfectly  frank  with  you,"  the  pub- 
lisher exclaimed,  smiling  beneficently.  "  My 
reader  likes  your  book.  I'll  tell  you  what  he 
says."  He  took  a  sheet  of  paper  that  lay  on 
the  top  of  the  manuscript  and  read. 

I  was  enchanted,  spell-bound.  The  nameless 
literary  adviser  used  phrases  of  which  the  fol- 
lowing are  specimens  (I  am  recording  with  ex- 
actitude) :  "  Written  with  great  knowledge  and 
a  good  deal  of  insight."  "  Character  delineated 
by  a  succession  of  rare  and  subtle  touches." 
"  Living,  convincing."  "  Vigour  and  accuracy." 
"  The  style  is  good." 

I  had  no  idea  that  publishers'  readers  were 
capable  of  such  laudation. 

The  publisher  read  on :  "I  do  not  think  it 
likely  to  be  a  striking  success ! " 

"Oh!"  I  murmured,  shocked  by  this  blunt- 
ness. 


76  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

"  There's  no  money  in  it,"  the  publisher  re- 
peated, firmly.  "  First  books  are  too  risky. 
...  I  should  like  to  publish  it." 

"Well?"  I  said,  and  paused.  I  felt  that  he 
had  withdrawn  within  himself  in  order  to  ponder 
upon  the  chances  of  this  terrible  risk.  So  as  not 
to  incommode  him  with  my  gaze,  I  examined  the 
office,  which  resembled  a  small  drawing-room 
rather  than  an  office.  I  saw  around  me  signed 
portraits  of  all  the  roaring  lions  on  the  sunny 
side  of  Grub  Street. 

"  I'll  publish  it,"  said  the  publisher,  and  I  be- 
lieve he  made  an  honest  attempt  not  to  look  like 
a  philanthropist;  however,  the  attempt  failed. 
"  I'll  publish  it.  But  of  course  I  can  only  give 
you  a  small  royalty." 

"What  royalty?"  I  asked. 

"  Five  per  cent. — on  a  three-and-six-penny 
book." 

"  Very  well.     Thank  you !  "  I  said. 

"1*11  give  you  fifteen  per  cent,  after  the  sale 
of  five  thousand  copies,"  he  added  kindly. 

0  ironist! 

1  emerged   from   the  web   of   the   spider  tri- 
umphant, an  accepted  author.     Exactly  ten  days 
had  elapsed   since  I  had  first  parted  with  my 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  77 

manuscript.  Once  again  life  was  plagiarizing 
fiction.  I  could  not  believe  that  this  thing  was 
true.  I  simply  could  not  believe  it.  "  Oh !  "  I  re- 
flected, incredulous,  "  Something's  bound  to 
happen.  It  can't  really  come  off.  The  publisher 
might  die,  and  then " 

Protected  by  heaven  on  account  of  his  good 
deeds,  the  publisher  felicitously  survived;  and 
after  a  delay  of  twelve  months  (twelve  cen- 
turies—during which  I  imagined  that  the  uni- 
verse hung  motionless  and  expectant  in  the 
void!)  he  accomplished  his  destiny  by  really  and 
truly  publishing  my  book. 

The  impossible  had  occurred.  I  was  no 
longer  a  mere  journalist ;  I  was  an  author. 

"After  all,  it's  nothing!"  I  said,  with  that 
intense  and  unoriginal  humanity  which  distin- 
guishes all  of  us.  And  in  a  blinding  flash  I  saw 
that  an  author  was  in  essence  the  same  thing  as 
a  grocer  or  a  duke. 


IX 

MY  novel,  under  a  new  title,  was  pub- 
lished both  in  England  and  America. 
I     actually     collected     forty-one     re- 
views, of  it,  and  there  must  have  been  many  that 
escaped  me.     Of  these  forty-one,  four  were  un- 
favourable, eleven  mingled  praise  and  blame  in 
about    equal    proportions,    and   twenty-six   were 
unmistakably  favourable,  a  few  of  them  being  en- 
thusiastic. 

Yet  I  had  practically  no  friends  on  the  press. 
One  friend  I  had,  a  man  of  power,  and  he  re- 
viewed my  book  with  an  appreciation  far  too 
kind;  but  his  article  came  as  a  complete  surprise 
to  me.  Another  friend  I  had,  sub-editor  of  a 
society  weekly,  and  he  asked  me  for  a  copy  of 
my  book  so  that  he  might  "  look  after  it "  in 
the  paper.  Here  is  part  of  the  result : 

"He  has  all  the  young  novelist's  faults. 
.  .  .  These  are  glaring  faults;  for,  given  lack 
of  interest,  and  unpleasant  scenes,  how  can  a 
book  be  expected  to  be  popular?  " 

78 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  79 

A  third  friend  I  had,  who  knew  the  chief  fiction- 
reviewer  on  a  great  morning  paper.  He  asked 
me  for  a  special  copy  of  my  book,  and  quite  on 
his  own  initiative,  undertook  to  arrange  the 
affair.  Here  is  part  of  the  result : 

"  There  is  not  much  to  be  said  either  for  or 
against by  Mr. " 

I  had  no  other  friends  on  the  press,  or  friends 
who  had  friends  on  the  press. 

I  might  easily  butcher  the  reviews  for  your 
amusement,  but  this  practice  is  becoming  trite. 
I  will  quote  a  single  sentence  which  pleased  me 
as  much  as  any : — "  What  our  hero's  fate  was  let 
those  who  care  to  know  find  out,  but  let  us  as- 
sure them  that  in  its  discovery  they  will  read  of 
London  life  and  labour  as  it  is,  not  as  the  bulk 
of  romances  paint  it."  All  the  principal  organs 
were  surprisingly  appreciative.  And  the  major- 
ity of  the  reviewers  agreed  that  my  knowledge 
of  human  nature  wag  exceptionally  good,  that  my 
style  was  exceptionally  good,  that  I  had  in  me 
the  makings  of  a  novelist,  and  that  my  present 
subject  was  weak.  My  subject  was  not  weak; 
but  let  that  pass.  When  I  reflect  how  my  book 
flouted  the  accepted  canons  of  English  fiction, 
and  how  many  aspects  of  it  must  have  annoyed 


8o  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

nine  reviewers  out  of  ten,  I  am  compelled  to  the 
conclusion  that  reviewers  are  a  very  good-na- 
tured class  of  persons.  I  shall  return  to  this 
interesting  point  later — after  I  have  described 
how  I  became  a  reviewer  myself.  The  fact  to  be 
asserted  is  that  I,  quite  obscure  and  defenceless, 
was  treated  very  well.  I  could  afford  to  smile 
from  a  high  latitude  at  the  remark  of  "  The  New 

York  "  that  "  the  story  and  characters  are 

commonplace  in  the  extreme."  I  felt  that  I  had 
not  lived  in  vain,  and  that  kindred  spirits  were 
abroad  in  the  land. 

My  profits  from  this  book  with  the  exceptional 
style  and  the  exceptional  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  exceeded  the  cost  of  having  it  typewritten 
by  the  sum  of  one  sovereign.  Nor  was  I,  nor  am 
I,  disposed  to  grumble  at  this.  Many  a  first  book 
has  cost  its  author  a  hundred  pounds.  I  got  a 
new  hat  out  of  mine. 

What  I  did  grumble  at  was  the  dishonour  of 
the  prophet  in  his  own  county.  Here  I  must  deli- 
cately recall  that  my  novel  was  naturalistic,  and 
that  it  described  the  career  of  a  young  man  alone 
in  London.  It  had  no  "  realism  "  in  the  vulgar 
sense,  as  several  critics  admitted,  but  still  it  was 
desperately  exact  in  places,  and  I  never  sur- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  81 

rounded  the  head  of  a  spade  with  the  aureole  of 
a  sentimental  implement.  The  organ  of  a  great 
seaport  remarked  i  "  We  do  not  consider  the 
book  a  healthy  one.  We  say  no  more."  Now 
you  must  imagine  this  excessively  modern  novel 
put  before  a  set  of  estimable  people  whose  ideas 
on  fiction  had  been  formed  under  the  influence  of 
Dickens  and  Mrs.  Henry  Wood,  and  who  had 
never  changed  those  ideas.  Some  of  them,  per- 
haps, had  not  read  a  novel  for  ten  years  before 
they  read  mine.  The  result  was  appalling,  fright- 
ful, tragical.  For  months  I  hesitated  to  visit 
the  town  which  had  the  foresight  to  bear  me,  and 
which  is  going  to  be  famous  on  that  score.  I  was 
castigated  in  the  local  paper.  My  nearest  and 
dearest  played  nervously  with  their  bread  when 
my  novel  was  mentioned  at  dinner.  A  relative 
in  a  distant  continent  troubled  himself  to  inform 
me  that  the  book  was  fragmentary  and  absolutely 
worthless.  The  broader-minded  merely  wished 
that  I  had  never  written  the  book.  The  discreet 
received  it  in  silence.  One  innocent  person,  for 
whom  I  have  the  warmest  regard,  thought  that 
my  novel  might  be  a  suitable  birthday  present 
for  his  adolescent  son.  By  chance  he  perused 
the  book  himself  on  the  birthday  eve.  I  was  told 


82  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

that  neither  on  that  night  nor  on  the  next  did 
he  get  a  wink  of  sleep.  His  adolescent  son  cer- 
tainly never  got  my  book. 

Most  authors,  I  have  learnt  on  enquiry,  have 
to  suffer  from  this  strange  lack  of  appreciation  in 
the  very  circle  where  appreciation  should  be  kind- 
est; if  one  fault  isn't  found,  another  is;  but  they 
draw  a  veil  across  that  dark  aspect  of  the  bright 
auctorial  career.  I,  however,  am  trying  to  do 
without  veils,  and  hence  I  refer  to  the  matter. 


^^  iTY  chief  resigned  his  position  on  the  pa- 
l\/|l  Per  with  intent  to  enliven  other 
«™  •  ••  spheres  of  activity.  The  news  of  his 
resignation  was  a  blow  to  me.  It  often  happens 
that  when  an  editor  walks  out  of  an  office  in  the 
exercise  of  free-will,  the  staff  follows  him  under 
compulsion.  In  Fleet  Street  there  is  no  security 
of  tenure  unless  one  is  ingenious  enough  to  be 
the  proprietor  of  one's  paper. 

"  I  shall  never  get  on  with  any  one  as  I  have 
got  on  with  you,"  I  said  to  the  chief. 

"  You  needn't,"  he  answered.  "  I'm  sure 
they'll  have  the  sense  to  give  you  my  place  if 
you  ask  for  it"  "  They  "  were  a  board  of  direc- 
tors. 

And  they  had  the  sense;  they  even  had  the 
sense  not  to  wait  until  I  asked.  I  have  before 
remarked  that  the  thumb  of  my  Fate  has  always 
been  turned  up.  Still  on  the  glorious  side  of 
thirty,  still  young,  enthusiastic,  and  a  prey  to 
delightful  illusions,  I  suddenly  found  myself  the 
editor  of  a  London  weekly  paper.  It  was  not 
83 


84  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

a  leading  organ,  but  it  was  a  London  weekly 
paper,  and  it  had  pretensions ;  at  least  I  had.  My 
name  was  inscribed  in  various  annuals  of  refer- 
ence. I  dined  as  an  editor  with  other  editors. 
I  remember  one  day  sitting  down  to  table  in  a 
populous  haunt  of  journalists  with  no  less  than 
four  editors.  "  Three  years  ago,"  I  said  to  my- 
self, "  I  should  have  deemed  this  an  impossible 
fairy  tale."  I  know  now  that  there  are  hundreds 
of  persons  in  London  and  elsewhere  who  regard 
even  editors  with  gentle  and  condescending  tol- 
eration. One  learns. 

I  needed  a  sub-editor,  and  my  first  act  was  to 
acquire  one.  I  had  the  whole  world  of  struggling 
lady-journalists  to  select  from:  to  choose  was  an 
almost  sublime  function.  For  some  months  pre- 
viously we  had  been  receiving  paragraphs  and 
articles  from  an  outside  contributor  whose  flair 
in  the  discovery  of  subjects,  whose  direct  sim- 
plicity of  style  and  general  tidiness  of  "copy," 
had  always  impressed  me.  I  had  never  seen  her, 
and  I  knew  nothing  about  her ;  but  I  decided  that, 
if  she  pleased,  this  lady  should  be  my  sub-editor. 
I  wrote  desiring  her  to  call,  and  she  called. 
Without  much  preface  I  offered  her  the  situation ; 
she  accepted  it. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  85 

"  Who  recommended  me  to  you?  "  she  asked. 

"  No  one,"  I  replied,  in  the  role  of  Joseph  Pu- 
litzer; "  I  liked  your  stuff." 

It  was  a  romantic  scene.  I  mention  it  because 
I  derived  a  child-like  enjoyment  from  that  morn- 
ing. Vanity  was  mixed  up  in  it ;  but  I  argued — 
If  you  are  an  editor,  be  an  editor  imaginatively. 
I  seemed  to  resemble  Louts  the  Fifteenth  be- 
ginning to  reign  after  the  death  of  the  Regent, 
but  with  no  troublesome  Fleury  in  the  back- 
ground. 

"  Now,"  I  cried,  "  up  goes  the  circulation !  " 

But  circulations  are  not  to  be  bullied  into  ascen- 
sion. They  will  only  rise  on  the  pinions  of  a 
carefully  constructed  policy.  I  thought  I  knew 
all  about  journalism  for  women,  and  I  found  that 
I  knew  scarcely  the  fringe  of  it.  A  man  may 
be  a  sub-editor,  or  even  an  assistant-editor,  for 
half  a  lifetime,  and  yet  remain  ignorant  of  the 
true  significance  of  journalism.  Those  first 
months  were  months  of  experience  in  a  very 
poignant  sense.  The  proprietary  desired  certain 
modifications  in  the  existing  policy.  O  that  mys- 
terious "policy,"  which  has  to  be  created  and 
built  up  out  of  articles,  paragraphs,  and  pictures! 
That  thrice-mysterious  "  public  taste  "  which  has 


86  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

to  be  aimed  at  in  the  dark  and  hit !  I  soon  learnt 
the  difference  between  legislature  and  executive. 
I  could  "  execute  "  anything,  from  a  eulogy  of  a 
philanthropic  duchess  to  a  Paris  fashion  letter. 
I  could  instruct  a  fashion-artist  as  though  I  knew 
what  I  was  talking  about.  I  could  play  Blucher 
at  the  Waterloo  of  the  advertisement-manager. 
I  could  interview  a  beauty  and  make  her  say 
the  things  that  a  beauty  must  say  in  an  interview. 
But  to  devise  the  contents  of  an  issue,  to  plan 
them,  to  balance  them;  to  sail  with  this  wind 
and  tack  against  that;  to  keep  a  sensitive  cool 
finger  on  the  faintly  beating  pulse  of  the  terrible 
many-headed  patron;  to  walk  in  a  straight  line 
through  a  forest  black  as  midnight;  to  guess  the 
riddle  of  the  circulation-book  week  by  week;  to 
know  by  instinct  why  Smiths  sent  in  a  repeat- 
order,  or  why  Simpkins'  was  ten  quires  less;  to 
keep  one  eye  on  the  majestic  march  of  the  world, 
and  the  other  on  the  vagaries  of  a  bazaar-reporter 
who  has  forgotten  the  law  of  libel:  these  things, 
and  seventy-seven  others,  are  the  real  journalism. 
It  is  these  things  that  make  editors  sardonic, 
grey,  unapproachable. 

Unique  among  all  suspenses  is  the  suspense 
that  occupies  the  editorial  mind  between  the  mo- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  87 

ment  of  finally  going  to  press  and  the  moment  of 
examining  the  issue  on  the  morning  of  publication. 
Errors,  appalling  and  disastrous  errors,  will  creep 
in;  and  they  are  irremediable  then.  These  mis- 
haps occur  to  the  most  exalted  papers,  to  all  pa- 
pers, except  perhaps  the  "  Voce  della  Verita," 
which,  being  the  organ  of  the  Pope,  is  presumably 
infallible.  Tales  circulate  in  Fleet  Street  that 
make  the  hair  stand  on  end;  and  every  editor 
says :  "  This  might  have  happened  to  me. "  Sub- 
tle beyond  all  subtleties  is  the  magic  and  sinister 
change  that  happens  to  your  issue  in  the  machine- 
room  at  the  printers.  You  pass  the  final  page 
and  all  seems  fair,  attractive,  clever,  well-de- 
signed. .  .  .  Ah!  But  what  you  see  is  not 
what  is  on  the  paper;  it  is  the  reflection  of  the 
bright  image  in  your  mind  of  what  you  intended ! 
When  the  last  thousand  is  printed  and  the  par- 
cels are  in  the  vans,  then  you  gaze  at  the  unalter- 
able thing,  and  you.  see  it  coldly  as  it  actually 
is.  You  see  not  what  you  intended,  but  what 
you  have  accomplished.  And  the  difference!  It 
is  like  the  chill,  steely  dawn  after  the  vague  po- 
etry of  a  moonlit  night. 

There  is  no  peace  for  an  editor.     He  may  act 
the  farce  of  taking  a  holiday,  but  the  worm  of 


88  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

apprehension  is  always  gnawing  at  the  root  of 
pleasure.  I  once  put  my  organ  to  bed  and  went 
off  by  a  late  train  in  a  perfect  delirium  of  joyous 
anticipation  of  my  holiday.  I  was  recalled  by 
a  telegram  that  a  fire  with  a  strong  sense  of 
ironic  humour  had  burnt  the  printing  office  to 
the  ground  and  destroyed  five-sixths  of  my  entire 
issue.  In  such  crises  something  has  to  be  done, 
and  done  quickly.  You  cannot  say  to  your  public 
next  week :  "  Kindly  excuse  the  absence  of  the 
last  number,  as  there  was  a  fire  at  the  printers." 
Your  public  recks  not  of  fires,  no  more  than  the 
General  Post  Office,  in  its  attitude  towards  late 
clerks,  recognizes  the  existence  of  fogs  in  winter. 
And  herein  lies,  for  the  true  journalist,  one  of  the 
principal  charms  of  Fleet  Street.  Herein  lies  the 
reason  why  an  editor's  life  is  at  once  insufferable 
and  worth  living.  There  are  no  excuses.  Every 
one  knows  that  if  the  crater  of  Highgate  Hill 
were  to  burst  and  bury  London  in  lava  to-morrow, 
the  newspapers  would  show  no  trace  of  the  dis- 
aster except  an  account  of  it.  That  thought  is 
fine,  heroic,  when  an  editor  thinks  of  it. 

And  if  an  editor  knows  not  peace,  he  knows 
pewer.  In  Fleet  Street,  as  in  other  streets,  the 
population  divides  itself  into  those  who  want 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  89 

something  and  those  who  have  something  to  be- 
stow; those  who  are  anxious  to  give  a  lunch,  and 
those  who  deign  occasionally  to  accept  a  lunch; 
those  who  have  an  axe  to  grind  and  those  who 
possess  the  grindstone.  The  Change  from  the 
one  position  to  the  other  was  for  me  at  first  rather 
disconcerting;  I  could  not  understand  it;  there 
was  an  apparent  unreality  about  it;  I  thought 
I  must  be  mistaken ;  I  said  to  myself :  "  Surely 
this  unusual  ingratiating  affability  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  accident  that  I  am  an  editor."  Then, 
like  the  rest  of  the  owners  of  grindstones,  I  grew 
accustomed  to  the  ownership,  and  cynical  withal, 
cold,  suspicious,  and  forbidding.  I  became  bored 
by  the  excessive  complaisance  that  had  once 
tickled  and  flattered  me.  (Nevertheless,  after  I 
had  ceased  to  be  an  editor  I  missed  it;  involun- 
tarily I  continued  to  expect  it.)  The  situation 
of  the  editor  of  a  ladies*  paper  is  piquantly  com- 
plicated, in  this  respect,  by  the  fact  that  some 
women,  not  many — but  a  few,  have  an  extraor- 
dinary belief  in,  and  make  unscrupulous  use  of, 
their  feminine  fascinations.  The  art  of  being 
"  nice  to  editors  "  is  diligently  practised  by  these 
few ;  often,  I  know,  with  brilliant  results.  Some- 
times I  have  sat  in  my  office,  with  the  charmer 


go  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

opposite,  and  sardonically  reflected :  "  You  think 
I  am  revolving  round  your  little  finger,  madam, 
but  you  were  never  more  mistaken  in  your  life." 
And  yet,  breathes  there  the  man  with  soul  so  uni- 
formly cold  that  once  or  twice  in  such  circum- 
stances the  woman  was  not  right  after  all?  I 
cannot  tell.  The  whole  subject,  the  subject  of 
that  strange,  disturbing,  distracting,  emotional 
atmosphere  of  femininity  which  surrounds  the 
male  in  command  of  a  group  of  more  or  less  tal- 
ented women,  is  of  a  supreme  delicacy.  It  could 
only  be  treated  safely  in  a  novel— one  of  the 
novels  which  it  is  my  fixed  intention  never  to 
write.  This  I  know  and  affirm,  that  the  average 
woman-journalist  is  the  most  loyal,  earnest,  and 
teachable  person  under  the  sun.  I  begin  to  feel 
sentimental  when  I  think  of  her  astounding  ear- 
nestness, even  in  grasping  the  live  coal  of  English 
syntax.  Syntax,  bane  of  writing-women,  I  have 
spent  scores  of  ineffectual  hours  in  trying  to 
inoculate  the  ungrammatical  sex  against  your  ter- 
rors !  And  how  seriously  they  frowned,  and  how 
seriously  I  talked;  and  all  the  while  the  eternal 
mystery  of  the  origin  and  destiny  of  all  life  lay 
thick  and  unnoticed  about  us! 
These  syntax-sittings  led  indirectly  to  a  new 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  91 

development  of  my  activities.  One  day  a  man 
called  on  me  with  a  letter  of  introduction.  He 
was  a  colonial  of  literary  tastes.  I  asked  in  what 
manner  I  might  serve  him. 

"I  want  to  know  whether  you  would  care  to 
teach  me  journalism,"  he  said. 

"  Teach  you  journalism !  "  I  echoed,  wondering 
by  what  unperceived  alchemy  I  myself,  but  yes- 
terday a  tyro,  had  been  metamorphosed  into  a 
professor  of  the  most  comprehensive  of  all  crafts. 

"I  am  told  you  are  the  best  person  to  come 
to,"  he  said. 

"  Why  not  ?  "  I  thought.  "  Why  shouldn't  I  ?  " 
I  have  never  refused  work  when  the  pay  has  been 
good.  I  named  a  fee  that  might  have  frightened 
him,  but  it  did  not.  And  so  it  fell  out  that  I 
taught  journalism  to  him,  and  to  others,  for  a 
year  or  two.  This  vocation  suited  me;  I  had 
an  aptitude  for  it;  and  my  fame  spread  abroad. 
Some  of  the  greatest  experts  in  London  compli- 
mented me  on  my  methods  and  my  results. 
Other  and  more  ambitious  schemes,  however,  in- 
duced me  to  abandon  this  lucrative  field,  which 
was  threatening  to  grow  tiresome. 


XI 

I  COME  now  to  a  question  only  less  delicate 
than  that  of  the  conflict  of  sexes  in  journal- 
ism— the  question  of  reviewing,  which, 
however,  I  shall  treat  with  more  freedom.  If 
I  have  an  aptitude  for  anything  at  all  in  letters, 
it  is  for  criticism.  Whenever  I  read  a  work  of 
imagination,  I  am  instantly  filled  with  ideas  con- 
cerning it;  I  form  definite  views  about  its  merit 
or  demerit,  and  having  formed  them,  I  hold  those 
views  with  strong  conviction.  Denial  of  them 
rouses  me ;  I  must  thump  the  table  in  support  of 
them ;  I  must  compel  people  to  believe  that  what 
I  say  is  true;  I  cannot  argue  without  getting 
serious  in  spite  of  myself.  In  literature,  but  in 
nothing  else,  I  am  a  propagandist ;  I  am  not  con- 
tent to  keep  my  opinion  and  let  others  keep 
theirs.  To  have  a  worthless  book  in  my  house 
(save  in  the  way  of  business),  to  know  that  any 
friend  of  mine  is  enjoying  it,  actually  distresses 
me.  That  book  must  go,  the  pretensions  of  that 
book  must  be  exposed,  if  I  am  to  enjoy  peace 

92 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  93 

of  mind.  Some  may  suspect  that  I  am  guilty  here 
of  the  affectation  of  a  pose.  Really  it  is  not  so. 
I  often  say  to  myself,  after  the  heat  of  an  argu- 
ment, a  denunciation,  or  a  defence :  "  What  does 
it  matter,  fool?  The  great  mundane  movement 
will  continue,  the  terrestrial  ball  will  roll  on." 
But  will  it?  Something  must  matter,  after  all, 
or  the  mundane  movement  emphatically  would 
not  continue.  And  the  triumph  of  a  good 
book,  and  the  ignominy  of  a  bad  book,  matter  to 
me. 

The  criticism  of  imaginative  prose  literature, 
which  is  my  speciality,  is  an  over-crowded  and 
not  very  remunerative  field  of  activity.  Every 
intelligent  mediocrity  in  Fleet  Street  thinks  he 
can  appraise  a  novel,  and  most  of  them,  judging 
from  the  papers,  seem  to  make  the  attempt.  And 
so  quite  naturally  the  pay  is  as  a  rule  contempti- 
ble. To  enter  this  field,  therefore,  with  the  in- 
tention of  tilling  itjto  a  profitable  fiscal  harvest 
is  an  enterprise  in  tfye  nature  of  a  forlorn  hope. 
I  undertook  it  in  innocence  and  high  spirits,  from 
a  profound  instinct.  I  had  something  to  say. 
Of  late  years  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  chief  characteristic  of  all  bad  reviewing  is 
the  absence  of  genuine  conviction,  of  a  message, 


94  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

of  a  clear  doctrine ;  the  incompetent  reviewer  has 
to  invent  his  opinions. 

I  succeeded  at  first  by  dint  of  ignoring  one  of 
the  elementary  laws  of  journalism,  to-wit,  that 
editors  do  not  accept  reviews  from  casual  out- 
siders. I  wrote  a  short  review  of  a  French  work 
and  sent  it  to  "The  Illustrated  London  News," 
always  distinguished  for  its  sound  literary  criti- 
cism. Any  expert  would  have  told  me  that  I  was 
wasting  labour  and  postage.  Nevertheless  the 
review  was  accepted,  printed,  and  handsomely 
paid  for.  I  then  sent  a  review  of  a  new  edition 
of  Edward  Carpenter's  "  Towards  Democracy  "  to 
an  evening  paper,  and  this,  too,  achieved  pub- 
licity. After  that,  for  some  months,  I  made  no 
progress.  And  then  I  had  the  chance  of  a  lit- 
erary caaserie  in  a  weekly  paper:  eight  hundred 
words  a  week,  thirty  pounds  a  year.  I  wrote  a 
sample  article — and  I  well  remember  the  incred- 
ible pains  I  took  to  show  that  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton's 
"  In  Haste  and  at  Leisure  "  was  thoroughly  bad 
— but  my  article  was  too  "  literary.'"  The  editor 
with  thirty  pounds  a  year  to  spend  on  literary 
criticism  went  in  search  of  a  confection  less  aus- 
tere than  mine.  But  I  was  not  baulked  for  long. 
The  literary  column  of  my  own  paper  (of  which 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  95 

I  was  then  only  assistant-editor)  was  presented 
to  me  on  my  assurance  that  I  could  liven  it  up: 
seven  hundred  words  a  week,  at  twelve  and  six- 
pence. The  stuff  that  I  wrote  was  entirely  un- 
suited  to  the  taste  of  our  public;  but  it  attracted 
attention  from  the  seats  of  the  mighty,  and  it 
also  attracted — final  triumph  of  the  despised  re- 
viewer!— publishers'  advertisements.  I  wrote 
this  column  every  week  for  some  years.  And 
I  got  another  one  to  do,  by  asking  for  it.  Then 
I  selected  some  of  my  best  and  wittiest  reviews, 
and  sent  them  to  the  editor  of  a  well-known  organ 
of  culture  with  a  note  suggesting  that  my  pen 
ought  to  add  to  the  charms  of  his  paper.  An 
editor  of  sagacity  and  perspicacity,  he  admitted 
the  soundness  of  my  suggestion  without  cavil, 
and  the  result  was  mutually  satisfactory.  At  the 
present  time  *  I  am  continually  refusing  critical 
work.  I  reckon  that  on  an  average  I  review  a 
book  and  a  fraction  of  a  book  every  day  of  my 
life,  Sundays  included. 

"  Then,"  says  the  man  in  the  street  inevitably, 
"  you  must  spend  a  very  large  part  of  each  day 
in  reading  new  books."  Not  so.  I  fit  my  re- 
viewing into  the  odd  unoccupied  corners  of  my 

*  1900. 


96  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

time,  the  main  portions  of  which  are  given  to 
the  manufacture  of  novels,  plays,  short  stories, 
and  longer  literary  essays.  I  am  an  author  of 
several  sorts.  I  have  various  strings  to  my  bow. 
And  I  know  my  business.  I  write  half  a  million 
words  a  year.  That  is  not  excessive;  but  it  is 
passable  industry,  and  nowadays  I  make  a  point 
of  not  working  too  hard.  The  half  million  words 
contain  one  or  two  books,  one  or  two  plays,  and 
numerous  trifles*not  connected  with  literary  criti- 
cism; only  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
words  are  left  for  reviewing. 

The  sense  of  justice  of  the  man  in  the  street  is 
revolted.  "  You  do  not  read  through  all  the 
books  that  you  pretend  to  criticize?"  he  hints. 
I  have  never  known  a  reviewer  to  answer  this 
insinuation  straightforwardly  in  print,  but  I  will 
answer  it :  No,  I  do  not. 

And  the  man  in  the  street  says,  shocked: 
"  You  are  unjust." 

And  I  reply :  "  Not  at  all.  I  am  merely  an 
expert." 

The  performances  of  the  expert  in  any  craft 
will  surprise  and  amaze  the  inexpert.  Come  with 
me  into  my  study  and  I  will  surprise  and  amaze 
you.  Have  I  been  handling  novels  for  bread- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  97 

and-cheese  all  these  years  and  not  learnt  to  judge 
them  by  any  process  quicker  than  that  employed 
by  you  who  merely  pick  up  a  novel  for  relaxation 
after  dinner?  Assuming  that  your  taste  is  fairly 
sound,  let  us  be  confronted  with  the  same  new 
novel,  and  I  will  show  you,  though  you  are  a 
quick  reader,  that  I  can  anticipate  your  judgment 
of  that  novel  by  a  minimum  of  fifty-five  minutes. 
The  title-page — that  conjunction  of  the  title,  the 
name  of  the  author,  and  the  name  of  the  publisher 
— speaks  to  me,  telling  me  all  sorts  of  things. 
The  very  chapter-headings  deliver  a  message  of 
style.  The  narrative  everywhere  discloses  to  me 
the  merits  and  defects  of  the  writer;  no  author 
ever  lived  who  could  write  a  page  without  giving 
himself  away.  The  whole  book,  open  it  where  I 
will,  is  murmurous  with  indications  for  me.  In 
the  case  of  nine  books  of  ten,  to  read  them 
through  would  be  not  a  work  of  supererogation 
— it  would  be  a  sinful  waste  of  time  on  the  part 
of  a  professional  reviewer.  The  majority  of  nov- 
els— and  all  these  remarks  apply  only  to  novels 
— hold  no  surprise  for  the  professional  reviewer. 
He  can  foretell  them  as  the  nautical  almanac  fore- 
tells astronomical  phenomena.  The  customary 
established  popular  author  seldom  or  never  de- 


98  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

yiates  from  his  appointed  track,  and  it  is  the 
customary  established  popular  author  upon  whom 
chiefly  the  reviewer  is  a  parasite.  New  authors 
occasionally  cause  the  reviewer  to  hesitate  in  his 
swift  verdicts,  especially  when  the  verdict  is 
inclined  to  be  favourable.  Certain  publishers 
(that  is  to  say,  their  "readers")  have  a  knack 
of  acquiring  new  authors  who  can  imitate  real 
excellence  in  an  astonishing  manner.  In  some 
cases  the  reviewer  must  needs  deliberately  "  get 
into"  the  book,  in  order  not  to  be  deceived  by 
appearances,  in  order  to  decide  positively  whether 
the  author  has  genuine  imaginative  power,  and  if 
so,  whether  that  power  is  capable  of  a  sustained 
effort.  But  these  difficult  instances  are  rare. 
There  remains  the  work  of  the  true  artist,  the 
work  that  the  reviewer  himself  admires  and  en- 
joys: say  one  book  in  fifty,  or  one  in  a  hundred. 
The  reviewer  reads  that  through. 

Brief  reflection  will  convince  any  one  that  it 
would  be  economically  impossible  for  the  re- 
viewer to  fulfil  this  extraordinary  behest  of  the 
man  of  the  street  to  read  every  book  through. 
Take  your  London  morning  paper,  and  observe 
the  column  devoted  to  fiction  of  the  day.  It  com- 
prises some  fifteen  hundred  words,  and  the  re- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  99 

viewer  receives,  if  he  is  well  paid,  three  guineas 
for  it.  Five  novels  are  discussed.  Those  novels 
will  amount  to  sixteen  hundred  pages  of  printed 
matter.  Reading  at  the  rate  of  eight  words  a 
second,  the  reviewer  would  accomplish  two  pages 
a  minute,  and  sixteen  hundred  pages  in  thirteen 
hours  and  twenty  minutes.  Add  an  hour  and 
forty  minutes  for  the  composition,  and  we  have 
fifteen  hours,  or  two  days'  work.  Do  you  im- 
agine that  the  reviewer  of  a  London  morning 
paper  is  going  to  hire  out  his  immortal  soul,  his 
experience,  his  mere  skill,  at  the  rate  of  thirty- 
one  and  sixpence  per  day  on  irregular  jobs? 
Scarcely.  He  will  earn  his  three  guineas  inside 
three  hours,  and  it  will  be  well  and  truly  earned. 
As  a  journeyman  author,  with  the  ability  and 
inclination  to  turn  my  pen  in  any  direction  at 
request,  I  long  ago  established  a  rule  never  to 
work  for  less  than  ten  shillings  an  hour  on  piece- 
work. If  an  editor  Commissioned  an  article,  he 
received  from  me  as  much  fundamental  brain- 
power and  as  much  time  as  the  article  demanded 
— up  to  the  limit  of  his  pay  in  terms  of  hours  at 
ten  shillings  apiece.  But  each  year  I  raise  my 
price  per  hour.  Of  course,  when  I  am  working 
on  my  own  initiative,  for  the  sole  advancement 


ioo   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

of  my  artistic  reputation,  I  ignore  finance  and 
think  of  glory  alone.  It  cannot,  however,  be  too 
clearly  understood  that  the  professional  author, 
the  man  who  depends  entirely  on  his  pen  for  the 
continuance  of  breath,  and  whose  income  is  at 
the  mercy  of  an  illness  or  a  headache,  is  eternally 
compromising  between  glory  and  something  more 
edible  and  warmer  at  nights.  He  labours  in  the 
first  place  for  food,  shelter,  tailors,  a  woman,  Eu- 
ropean travel,  horses,  stalls  at  the  opera,  good 
cigars,  ambrosial  evenings  in  restaurants;  and  he 
gives  glory  the  best  chance  he  can.  I  am  not 
speaking  of  geniuses  with  a  mania  for  posterity; 
I  am  speaking  of  human  beings. 

To  return  and  to  conclude  this  chapter.  I  feel 
convinced — nay,  I  know — that  on  the  whole 
novelists  get  a  little  more  than  justice  at  the 
hands  of  their  critics.  I  can  recall  many  in- 
stances in  which  my  praise  has,  in  the  light  of 
further  consideration,  exceeded  the  deserts  of  a 
book;  but  very,  very  few  in  which  I  have  cast 
a  slur  on  genuine  merit.  Critics  usually  display 
a  tendency  towards  a  too  generous  kindness,  par- 
ticularly Scottish  reviewers;  it  is  almost  a  rule 
of  the  vocation.  Most  authors,  I  think,  recog- 
nize this  pleasing  fact.  It  is  only  the  minority, 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  101 

rabid  for  everlasting  laudation,  who  carp;  and, 
carping,  demand  the  scalps  of  multiple-reviewers 
as  a  terrible  example  and  warning  to  the  smaller 
fry. 


XII 

SERIAL  fiction  is  sold  and  bought  just  like 
any  other  fancy  goods.  It  has  its  whole- 
sale houses,  its  commercial  travellers — 
even  its  trusts  and  "corners."  An  editor  may 
for  some  reason  desire  the  work  of  a  particular 
author;  he  may  dangle  gold  before  that  author 
or  that  author's  agent;  but  if  a  corner  has  been 
established  he  will  be  met  by  polite  regrets  and 
the  information  that  Mr.  So-and-So,  or  the  Such- 
and-Such  Syndicate,  is  the  proper  quarter  to  ap- 
ply to;  then  the  editor  is  aware  that  he  will  get 
what  he  wants  solely  by  one  method  of  payment 
—through  the  nose.  A  considerable  part  of  the 
fiction  business  is  in  the  hand  of  a  few  large  syn- 
dicates— syndicates  in  name  only,  and  middle- 
men in  fact.  They  perform  a  useful  function. 
They  will  sell  to  the  editor  the  entire  rights  of 
a  serial,  or  they  will  sell  him  the  rights  for  a 
particular  district — the  London  district,  the 
Manchester  district,  the  John-o'- Groats  district 
— the  price  varying  in  direct  ratio  with  the  size 

102 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  103 

of  the  district.  Many  London  papers  are  content 
to  buy  the  London  rights  only  of  a  serial,  or  to 
buy  the  English  rights  as  distinct  from  the  Scot- 
tish rights,  or  to  buy  the  entire  rights  minus  the 
rights  of  one  or  two  large  provincial  districts. 
Thus  a  serial  may  make  its  original  appearance 
in  London  only ;  or  it  may  appear  simultaneously 
in  London  and  Manchester  only,  or  in  London 
only  in  England  and  throughout  Scotland,  or  in 
fifty  places  at  once  in  England  and  Scotland. 
And  after  a  serial  has  appeared  for  the  first  time 
and  run  its  course,  the  weeklies  of  small  and  ob- 
scure towns,  the  proud  organs  of  all  the  little 
Pedlingtons,  buy  for  a  trifle  the  right  to  reprint 
it.  The  serials  of  some  authors  survive  in  this 
manner  for  years  in  the  remote  provinces;  pick 
up  the  local  sheet  in  a  country  inn,  and  you  may 
perhaps  shudder  again  over  the  excitations  of  a 
serial  that  you  read 'in  book  form  in  the  far-off 
nineties.  So,  all  editorial  purses  are  suited,  the 
syndicates  reap  much  profit,  and  they  are  in  a 
position  to  pay  their  authors,  both  tame  and  wild, 
a  just  emolument;  upon  occasion  they  can  even 
be  generous  to  the  verge  of  an  imprudence. 

When  I  was  an  editor,  I  found  it  convenient, 
economical,  and  satisfactory  to  buy  all  my  fiction 


104   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

from  a  large  and  powerful  syndicate.  I  got  im- 
portant "  names,"  the  names  that  one  sees  on  the 
title-pages  of  railway  novels,  at  a  moderate  price, 
and  it  was  nothing  to  me  that  my  serial  was  ap- 
pearing also  in  Killicrankie,  the  Knockmilly- 
down  Mountains,  or  the  Scilly  Isles.  The  repre- 
sentative of  the  syndicate,  a  man  clothed  with 
authority,  called  regularly;  he  displayed  his 
dainty  novelties,  his  leading  lines,  his  old  fa- 
vourites, his  rising  stars,  his  dark  horses,  and 
his  dead  bargains ;  I  turned  them  over,  like  a 
woman  on  remnant-day  at  a  draper's;  and  after 
the  inevitable  Oriental  chaffering,  we  came  to 
terms.  I  bought  Christmas  stories  in  March,  and 
seaside  fiction  in  December,  and  good  solid  Bar- 
ing-Gould or  Le  Queux  or  L.  T.  Meade  all  the 
year  round. 

Excellently  as  these  ingenious  narrative  con- 
fections served  their  purpose,  I  dreamed  of  some- 
thing better.  And  in  my  dream  a  sudden  and 
beautiful  thought  accosted  me:  Why  should  all 
the  buying  be  on  one  side? 

And  the  next  time  the  representative  of  the 
syndkate  called  upon  me,  I  met  his  overtures 
with  another. 

"Why  should  all  the  buying  be  on  one  side?" 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   105 

I  said.  "  You  know  I  am  an  author.'*  I  added 
that  if  he  had  not  seen  any  of  my  books,  I  must 
send  him  copies.  They  were  exquisitely  different 
from  his  wares,  but  I  said  nothing  about  that. 

"  Ah !  "  he  parried  firmly.  "  We  never  buy 
serials  from  editors." 

I  perceived  that  I  was  by  no  means  the  first 
astute  editor  who  had  tried  to  mingle  one  sort  of 
business  with  another.  Still  it  was  plain  to  me 
that  my  good  friend  was  finding  it  a  little  diffi- 
cult to  combine  the  affability  of  a  seller  with  the 
lofty  disinclination  of  one  who  is  requested  to 
buy  in  a  crowded  market. 

"  I  should  have  thought/*  I  remarked,  with  a 
diplomatic  touch  of  annoyance,  "  that  you  would 
buy  wherever  you  could  get  good  stuff." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  he  said,  "  of  course  we  do. 
But " 

"  Well,"  I  continued,  "  I  am  writing  a  serial, 
and  I  can  tell  you  it  will  be  a  good  one.  I  merely 
mention  it  to  you.  If  you  don't  care  for  it,  I 
fancy  I  can  discover  some  one  who  will." 

Then,  having  caused  to  float  between  us,  cloud- 
like,  the  significance  of  the  indisputable  fact  that 
there  were  other  syndicates  in  the  world,  I  pro- 
ceeded nonchalantly  to  the  matter  of  his  visit  and 


io6  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

gave  him  a  good  order.  He  was  an  able  mer- 
chant, but  I  had  not  moved  in  legal  circles  for 
nothing.  Business  is  business :  and  he  as  well  as 
I  knew  that  arbitrary  rules  to  the  exclusion  of 
editors  must  give  way  before  this  great  and  sub- 
lime truth,  the  foundation  of  England's  glory. 

The  next  thing  was  to  concoct  the  serial.  I 
had  entered  into  a  compact  with  myself  that  I 
would  never  "  write  down "  to  the  public  in  a 
long  fiction.  I  was  almost  bound  to  pander  to 
the  vulgar  taste,  or  at  any  rate  to  a  taste  not  re- 
fined, in  my  editing,  in  my  articles,  and  in  my 
short  stories,  but  I  had  sworn  solemnly  that  I 
would  keep  the  novel-form  unsullied  for  the  pure 
exercise  of  the  artist  in  me.  What  became  of 
this  high  compact?  I  merely  ignored  it.  I  tore 
it  up  and  it  was  forgotten,  the  instant  I  saw  a 
chance  of  earning  the  money  of  shame.  I  devised 
excuses,  of  course.  I  said  that  my  drawing-room 
wanted  new  furniture ;  I  said  that  I  might  lift  the 
sensational  serial  to  a  higher  place,  thus  serving 
the  cause  of  art;  I  said — I  don't  know  what  I 
said,  all  to  my  conscience.  But  I  began  the 
serial. 

As  an  editor,  I  knew  the  qualities  that  a  serial 
ought  to  possess.  And  I  knew  specially  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  107 

what  most  serials  lacked  was  a  large,  central,  uni- 
fying, vivifying  idea.  I  was  very  fortunate  in 
lighting  upon  such  an  idea  for  my  first  serial. 
There  are  no  original  themes ;  probably  no  writer 
ever  did  invent  an  original  theme ;  but  my  theme 
was  a  brilliant  imposture  of  originality.  It  had, 
too,  grandeur  and  passion,  and  fantasy,  and  it 
was  inimical  to  none  of  the  prejudices  of  the  serial 
reader.  In  truth  it  was  a  theme  worthy  of  much 
better  treatment  than  I  accorded  to  it.  Through- 
out the  composition  of  the  tale,  until  nearly  the 
end,  I  had  the  uneasy  feeling,  familiar  to  all 
writers,  that  I  was  frittering  away  a  really  good 
thing.  But  as  the  climax  approached,  the  situa- 
took  hold  of  me,  and  in  spite  of  myself  I  wrote 
my  best.  The  tale  was  divided  into  twelve  in- 
stalments of  five  thousand  words  each,  and  I 
composed  it  in  twenty-four  half-days.  Each 
morning,  as  I  walked  down  the  Thames  Embank- 
ment, I  contrived  a  chapter  of  two  thousand  five 
hundred  words,  and  each  afternoon  I  wrote  the 
chapter.  An  instinctive  sense  of  form  helped  me 
to  plan  the  events  into  an  imposing  shape,  and  it 
needed  no  abnormal  inventive  faculty  to  provide 
a  thrill  for  the  conclusion  of  each  section.  Fur- 
ther, I  was  careful  to  begin  the  story  on  the  first 


io8   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

page,  without  preliminaries,  and  to  finish  it 
abruptly  when  it  was  finished.  For  the  rest,  I 
put  in  generous  quantities  of  wealth,  luxury,  fem- 
inine beauty,  surprise,  catastrophe,  and  genial, 
incurable  optimism.  I  was  as  satisfied  with  the 
result  as  I  had  been  with  the  famous  poem  on 
Courage.  I  felt  sure  that  the  syndicate  had  never 
supplied  me  with  a  sensational  serial  half  as  good 
as  mine,  and  I  could  conceive  no  plea  upon  which 
they  would  be  justified  in  refusing  mine. 

They  bought  it.  We  had  a  difference  concern- 
ing the  price.  They  offered  sixty  pounds;  I 
thought  I  might  as  well  as  not  try  to  get  a  hun- 
dred, but  when  I  had  Hfted  them  up  to  seventy- 
five,  the  force  of  bluff  would  no  further  go,  and 
the  bargain  was  closed.  I  saw  that  by  writing 
serials  I  could  earn  three  guineas  per  half -day; 
I  saw  myself  embarking  upon  a  life  of  what 
Ebenezer  Jones  called  "  sensation  and  event "  ; 
I  saw  my  prices  increasing,  even  to  three  hun- 
dred pounds  for  a  sixty  thousand  word  yarn — 
my  imagination  stopped  there. 

The  lingering  remains  of  an  artistic  conscience 
prompted  me  to  sign  this  eye-smiting  work  with 
a  pseudonym.  The  syndicate,  since  my  name 
was  quite  unknown  in  their  world,  made  no  ob- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  109 

j  action,  and  I  invented  several  aliases,  none  of 
which  they  liked.  Then  a  friend  presented  me 
with  a  gorgeous  pseudonym — "  Sampson  Death." 
Surely,  I  thought,  the  syndicate  will  appreciate 
the  subtle  power  of  that!  But  no!  They 
averred  that  their  readers  would  be  depressed  by 
Sampson  Death  at  the  head  of  every  instalment. 

"Why  not  sign  your  own  name?"  they  sug- 
gested. 

And  I  signed  my  own  name.  I,  apprentice 
of  Flaubert  et  Cie.,  stood  forth  to  the  universe 
as  a  sensation-monger. 

The  syndicate  stated  that  they  would  like  to 
have  the  refusal  of  another  serial  from  my  pen. 

In  correcting  the  proofs  of  the  first  one,  I 
perceived  all  the  opportunities  I  had  missed  in 
it,  and  I  had  visions  of  a  sensational  serial  ab- 
solutely sublime  in  those  qualities  that  should 
characterize  a  sensational  serial.  I  knew  all 
about  Eugene  Sue,  and  something  about  Wilkie 
Collins;  but  my  ecstatic  contemplation  of  an 
ideal  serial  soared  far  beyond  these.  I  imagined 
a  serial  decked  with  the  profuse  ornament  of  an 
Eastern  princess,  a  serial  at  once  grandiose  and 
witty,  at  once  modern  and  transcendental,  a 
serial  of  which  the  interest  should  gradually 


no   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

close  on  the  reader  like  a  vice  until  it  became 
intolerable.  I  saw  the  whole  of  London  preoc- 
cupied with  this  serial  instead  of  with  cricket 
and  politics.  I  heard  the  dandiacal  City  youths 
discussing  in  first-class  compartments  on  the 
Underground  what  would  happen  next  in  it. 
I  witnessed  a  riot  in  Fleet  Street  because  I  had, 
accidentally  on  purpose,  delayed  my  copy  for 
twenty-four  hours,  and  the  editor  of  the  "  Daily 

"  had  been  compelled  to  come  out  with  an 

apology.  Lastly,  I  heard  the  sigh  of  relief  ex- 
haled to  heaven  by  a  whole  people,  when  in  the 
final  instalment  I  solved  the  mystery,  untied 
the  knot,  relieved  the  cruel  suspense. 

Suck  was  my  dream — a  dream  that  I  never 
realized,  but  which  I  believe  to  be  capable  of  reali- 
zation. It  is  decades  since  even  a  second-class 
imaginative  genius  devoted  itself  entirely  to  the 
cult  of  the  literary  frisson.  Sue  excited  a 
nation  by  admirable  sensationalism.  The  feat 
might  be  accomplished  again,  and  in  this  era  so 
prolific  in  Napoleons  of  the  press,  it  seems 
strange  that  no  Napoleon  has  been  able  to  or- 
ganize the  sensational  serial  on  a  Napoleonic 
scale. 

I   did   not   realize   my   dream,   but   I   was  in- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   in 

spired  by  it.  Once  more  I  received  from  the 
gods  a  plot  scintillating  with  possibilities.  It 
was  less  fine  than  the  previous  one;  it  was  of 
the  earth  earthly;  but  it  began  with  a  scene 
quite  unique  in  the  annals  of  syndicates,  and 
by  this  time  I  knew  a  little  better  how  to  keep  the 
fire  burning.  I  lavished  wit  and  style  on  the 
thing,  and  there  is  no  material  splendour  of 
modern  life  that  I  left  out.  I  plunged  into  it 
with  all  my  energy  and  enthusiasm,  and  wrote 
the  fifteen  instalments  in  fifteen  days;  I  tried 
to  feel  as  much  like  Dumas  ptre  as  I  could. 
But  when  I  had  done  I  felt,  physically,  rather 
more  like  the  fragile  Shelley  or  some  wan  curate 
than  Dumas.  I  was  a  wreck. 

The  syndicate  were  willing  to  buy  this  serial, 
but  they  offered  me  no  increase  of  rates.  I 
declined  to  accept  the  old  terms,  and  then  the 
syndicate  invited  me"  to  lunch.  I  made  one.  of 
the  greatest  financial  mistakes  of  my  life  on  that 
accurst  day,  and  my  only  excuse  is  that  I  was 
unaccustomed  to  being  invited  out  to  lunch  by 
syndicates.  I  ought  to  have  known*  with  all 
my  boasted  knowledge  of  the  world  of  business, 
that  syndicates  do  not  invite  almost  unknown 
authors  to  lunch  without  excellent  reason.  I 


H2   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

had  refused  the  syndicate's  offer,  and  the  syn- 
dicate asked  me  to  name  a  price  for  the  entire 
rights  of  my  tale.  I  named  a  price;  it  was  a 
good  price  for  me,  then;  but  the  words  were 
scarcely  out  of  my  mouth  before  I  saw  that  I 
had  blundered.  Too  late!  My  terms  were 
quietly  accepted.  Let  me  cast  no  slightest 
aspersion  upon  the  methods  of  the  syndicate: 
the  bargain  was  completed  before  lunch  had 
commenced. 

The  syndicate  disposed  of  the  whole  first 
serial  rights  of  my  tale  to  a  well-known  London 
weekly.  The  proprietors  of  the  paper  engaged 
a  first-class  artist  to  illustrate  it,  they  issued  a 
special  circular  about  it,  they  advertised  it  every 
week  on  800  railway  stations.  The  editor  of  the 
paper  wrote  me  an  extremely  appreciative  letter 
as  to  the  effect  of  the  serial  from  his  point  of 
view.  The  syndicate  informed  a  friend  of  mine 
that  it  was  the  best  serial  they  had  ever  had. 
After  running  in  London  it  overran  the  pro- 
vincial press  like  a  locust-swarm.  It  was,  in  a 
word,  a  boom.  It  came  out  in  volume  form,  and 
immediately  went  into  a  second  edition;  it  still 
sells.  It  was  the  first  of  my  books  that  "The 
Times  "  ever  condescended  to  review ;  the  "  Spec- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  113 

tator  "  took  it  seriously  in  a  column  and  a  quarter ; 
and  my  friends  took  it  seriously.  I  even  re- 
ceived cables  from  foreign  lands  with  offers  to 
buy  translation  rights.  I  became  known  as  the 
author  of  that  serial.  And  all  this,  save  for  an 
insignificant  trifle,  to  the  profit  of  an  exceed- 
ingly astute  syndicate ! 

Subsequently  I  wrote  other  serials,  but  never 
again  with  the  same  verve.  I  found  an  outlet 
for  my  energies  more  amusing  and  more  remun- 
erative than  the  concoction  of  serials;  and  I  am 
a  serialist  no  longer. 


XIII 

WHILE  yet  an  assistant-editor,  I  be- 
came a  dramatic  critic  through  the 
unwillingness  of  my  chief  to  attend 
a  theatrical  matinee  performance  given,  by 
some  forlorn  little  society,  now  defunct,  for  the 
rejuvenation  of  the  English  drama.  My  notice 
of  the  performance  amused  him,  and  soon  after- 
wards he  suggested  that  I  should  do  our  dra- 
matic column  in  his  stead.  Behold  me  a  "  first- 
nighter"!  When,  with  my  best  possible  air  of 
nonchalance  and  custom,  I  sauntered  into  my 
stall  on  a  Lyceum  first  night,  I  glanced  at  the 
first  rows  of  the  pit  with  cold  and  aloof  dis- 
dain. "Don't  you  wish  you  were  sue?"  I 
thought  behind  that  supercilious  mask.  "  You 
have  stood  for  hours  imprisoned  between  par- 
allel iron  railings.  Many  times  I  have  stood 
with  you.  But  never  again,  miserable  pittites !  " 
Nevertheless  I  was  by  no  means  comfortable  in 
my  stall.  Around  me  were  dozens  of  famous 
or  notorious  faces,  the  leading  representatives  of 

114 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  115 

all  that  is  glittering  and  factitious  in  the  city  of 
wealth,  pleasure,  and  smartness.  And  every- 
body seemed  to  know  everybody  else.  I  alone 
seemed  to  be  left  out  in  the  cold.  My  exas- 
perated self-conscious  fancy  perceived  in  every 
haughty  stare  the  enquiry :  "  Who  is  this 
whipper-snapper  in  the  dress-suit  that  obviously 
cost  four  guineas  in  Cheapside  ?  "  I  knew  not 
a  soul  in  that  brilliant  resort.  During  the  in- 
tervals I  went  into  the  foyer  and  listened  to  the 
phrases  which  the  critics  tossed  to  each  other 
over  their  liqueur-glasses.  Never  was  such  a 
genial  confusion  of  "Old  Chap,"  "Old  Man," 
"Old  Boy,"  "Dear  Old  Pal"!  "Are  they  all 
blood-brothers? "  I  asked  myself.  The  banal- 
ity, the  perfect  lack  of  any  sort  of  aesthetic  cul- 
ture, which  characterized  their  remarks  on  the 
piece,  astounded  me.  I  said  arrogantly :  "  If 
I  don't  know  more-  about  the  art  of  the  theatre 
than  the  whole  crcpvd  of  you  put  together,  I 
will  go  out  and  hang  myself."  Yet  I  was  un- 
speakably proud  to  be  among  them.  In  a  cor- 
ner I  caught  sight  of  a  renowned  novelist  whose 
work  I  respected.  None  noticed  him,  and  he 
looked  rather  sorry  for  himself.  "  You  and  I 
...  ! "  I  thought.  I  had  not  attended  many 


first  nights  before  I  discovered  that  the  handful 
of  theatrical  critics  whose  articles  it  is  possible 
to  read  without  fatigue,  made  a  point  of  never 
leaving  their  stalls.  They  were  nobody's  old 
chap,  and  nobody's  old  pal.  I  copied  their  be- 
haviour. 

First  on  my  own  paper,  and  subsequently  on 
two  others,  I  practised  dramatic  criticism  for  five 
or  six  years.  Although  I  threw  it  up  in  the  end 
mainly  from  sheer  lassitude,  I  enjoyed  the  work. 
It  means  late  nights,  and  late  nights  are  perdi- 
tion; but  there  is  a  meretricious  glamour  about 
it  that  attracts  the  foolish  moth  in  me,  and  this 
I  am  bound  to  admit.  My  trifling  influence 
over  the  public  was  decidedly  on  the  side  of  the 
angels.  I  gradually  found  that  I  possessed  a 
coherent  theory  of  the  drama,  definite  critical 
standards,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  apparatus;  in 
short,  that  I  had  something  to  say.  And  my 
verdicts  had  a  satisfactory  habit  of  coinciding 
with  those  of  the  two  foremost  theatrical  critics 
in  London — perhaps  in  Europe  (I  need  not 
name  them).  It  is  a  somewhat  strange  fact  that 
I  made  scarcely  any  friends  in  the  theatre. 
After  all  those  years  of  assiduous  first-nighting, 
I  was  almost  as  solitary  in  the  auditorium  on 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  117, 

the  evening  when  I  bade  a  blase  adieu  to  the 
critical  bench  as  when  I  originally  entered  it. 
I  fancied  I  had  wasted  my  time  and  impaired 
my  constitution  in  emulating  the  achievements 
of  Theophile  Gautier,  Hazlitt,  Francisque 
Sarcey  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  to  say  nothing 
of  Dutton  Cook  and  Mr.  Clement  Scott.  My 
health  may  have  suffered;  but,  as  it  happened, 
I  had  not  quite  wasted  my  time. 

"Why  don't  you  write  a  play  yourself?" 

This  blunt  question  was  put  to  me  by  a  friend, 
an  amateur  actor,  whom  I  had  asked  to  get  up 
some  little  piece  or  other  for  an  entertainment 
in  the  Theatre  Royal  back-drawing-room  of  my 
house. 

"  Quite  out  of  my  line,"  I  replied,  and  I  was 
absolutely  sincere.  I  had  no  notion  whatever  of 
writing  for  the  stage.  I  felt  sure  that  I  had  not 
the  aptitude. 

"  Nonsense !  "  he  Exclaimed.  "  It's  as  easy  as 
falling  off  a  log." 

We  argued,  and  I  was  on  the  point  of  refusing 
the  suggestion,  when  the  spirit  of  wild  adven- 
ture overcame  me,  and  I  gravely  promised  my 
friend  that  I  would  compose  a  duologue  if  he 
and  his  wife  would  promise  to  perform  it  at  my 


n8   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

party.  The  affair  was  arranged.  I  went  to  bed 
with  the  conviction  that  in  the  near  future  I  stood 
a  fair  chance  of  looking  an  ass.  However,  I 
met  with  what  I  thought  to  be  an  amusing  idea 
for  a  curtain-raiser  the  next  morning,  and  in 
the  afternoon  I  wrote  the  piece  complete.  I 
enjoyed  writing  it,  and  as  I  read  it  aloud  to 
myself  I  laughed  at  it.  I  discovered  that  I  had 
violated  the  great  canon  of  dramatic  art, — 
Never  keep  your  audience  in  the  dark,  and  this 
troubled  me  (Paul  Hervieu  had  not  then  demon- 
strated by  his  "  L'Enigme  "  that  that  canon  may 
be  broken  with  impunity)  ;  but  I  could  not  be 
at  the  trouble  of  reconstructing  the  whole  play 
for  the  sake  of  an  Aristotelian  maxim.  I  at 
once  posted  the  original  draft  to  my  friend 

with  this  note :    "  Dear  ,  Here  is  the  play 

which  last  night  I  undertook  to  write  for  you." 
The  piece  was  admirably  rendered  to  an 
audience  of  some  thirty  immortal  souls— of 
course  very  sympathetic  immortal  souls.  My 
feelings,  as  the  situation  which  I  had  invented 
gradually  developed  into  something  alive  on  that 
tiny  make-shift  stage,  were  peculiar  and,  in  a 
way,  alarming.  Every  one  who  has  driven  a 
motor-car  knows  the  uncanny  sensation  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   119 

ensues  when  for  the  first  time  in  your  life  you 
pull  the  starting  lever,  and  the  Thing  beneath 
you  begins  mysteriously  and  formidably  to 
move.  It  is  at  once  an  astonishment,  a  terror, 
and  a  delight.  I  felt  like  that  as  I  watched  the 
progress  of  my  first  play.  It  was  as  though  I 
had  unwittingly  liberated  an  energy  greater  than 
I  knew,  actually  created  something  vital.  This 
illusion  of  physical  vitality  is  the  exclusive  pos- 
session of  the  dramatist;  the  novelist,  the  poet, 
cannot  share  it.  The  play  was  a  delicious  suc- 
cess. People  laughed  so  much  that  some  of  my 
most  subtle  jocosities  were  drowned  in  the  ap- 
preciative cachinnation.  The  final  applause  was 
memorable,  at  any  rate  to  me.  No  mere  good- 
nature can  simulate  the  unique  ring  of  genuine 
applause,  and  this  applause  was  genuine.  It 
was  a  microscopic  triumph  for  me,  but  it  was 
a  triumph.  Every  one  said  to  me:  "But  you 
are  a  dramatist!"  "Oh,  no!"  I  replied  awk- 
wardly ;  "  this  trifle  is  really  nothing."  But  the 
still  small  voice  of  my  vigorous  self-confidence 
said :  "  Yes,  you  are,  and  you  ought  to  have 
found  it  out  years  ago! "  Among  my  audience 
was  a  publisher.  He  invited  me  to  write  for 
him  a  little  book  of  one-act  farces  for  amateurs; 


120   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

his  terms  were  agreeable.  I  wrote  three  such 
farces,  giving  two  days  to  each,  and  the  volume 
was  duly  published;  no  book  of  mine  has  cost 
me  less  trouble.  The  reviews  of  it  were  lavish 
in  praise  of  my  "  unfailing  wit " ;  the  circulation 
was  mediocre.  I  was  asked  by  companies  of 
amateur  actors  up  and  down  the  country  to 
assist  at  rehearsals  of  these  pieces;  but  I  could 
never  find  the  energy  to  comply,  save  once.  I 
hankered  after  the  professional  stage.  By  this 
time  I  could  see  that  I  was  bound  to  enter 
seriously  into  the  manufacture  of  stage-plays. 
My  readers  will  have  observed  that  once  again 
in  my  history  the  inducement  to  embark  for  a 
fresh  port  had  been  quite  external  and  adventi- 
tious. 

I  had  a  young  friend  with  an  extraordinary 
turn  for  brilliant  epigram  and  an  equally  ex- 
traordinary gift  for  the  devising  of  massive 
themes.  He  showed  me  one  day  the  manu- 
script of  a  play.  My  faith  in  my  instinct  for 
form,  whether  in  drama  or  fiction,  was  complete, 
and  I  saw  instantly  that  what  this  piece  lacked 
was  form,  which  means  intelligibility.  It  had 
everything  except  intelligibility.  u  Look  here !  " 
I  said  to  him,  "we  will  write  a  play  together, 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  121 

you   and   I.    We   can   do  something   that   will 

knock  spots  off "  etc.,  etc.    We  determined 

upon  a  grand  drawing-room  melodrama  which 
should  unite  style  with  those  qualities  that  make 
for  financial  success  on  the  British  stage.  In 
a  few  days  my  friend  produced  a  list  of  about 
a  dozen  "  ideas  "  for  the  piece.  I  chose  the  two 
largest  and  amalgamated  them.  In  the  con- 
fection of  the  plot,  and  also  throughout  the 
entire  process  of  manufacture,  my  experience  as 
a  dramatic  critic  proved  valuable.  I  believe  my 
friend  had  only  seen  two  plays  in  his  life.  We 
accomplished  our  first  act  in  a  month  or  so,  and 
when  this  was  done  and  the  scenario  of  the  other 
three  written  out,  we  informed  each  other  that 
the  stuff  was  exceedingly  good. 

Part  of  my  share  in  the  play  was  to  sell  it. 
I  knew  but  one  man  of  any  importance  in  the 
theatrical  world;  he  gave  me  an  introduction 
to  the  manager  of  a, West  End  theatre  second 
to  none  in  prestige  and  wealth.  The  introduc- 
tion had  weight;  the  manager  intimated  by 
letter  that  his  sole  object  in  life  was  to  serve 
me,  and  in  the  meantime  he  suggested  an  ap- 
pointment. I  called  one  night  with  our  first 
act  and  the  scenario,  and  amid  the  luxuriousness 


122   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

of  the  managerial  room,  the  aroma  of  coffee,  the 
odour  of  Turkish  cigarettes,  I  explained  to  that 
manager  the  true  greatness  of  our  play.  I  have 
never  been  treated  with  a  more  distinguished 
politeness;  I  might  have  been  Victorien  Sardou, 
or  Ibsen  .  .  .  (no,  not  Ibsen).  In  quite  a  few 
days  the  manager  telephoned  to  my  office  and 
asked  me  to  call  the  same  evening.  He  had 
read  the  manuscript;  he  thought  very  highly 
of  it,  very  highly.  "But "  Woe!  Desola- 
tion! Dissipation  of  airy  castles!  It  was  pre- 
posterous on  our  part  to  expect  that  our  first 
play  should  be  commissioned  by  a  leading 
theatre.  But  indeed  we  had  expected  this 
miracle.  The  fatal  "But"  arose  from  a  diffi- 
culty of  casting  the  principal  part;  so  the  man- 
ager told  me.  He  was  again  remarkably  cour- 
teous, and  he  assuaged  the  rigour  of  his  refusal 
by  informing  me  that  he  was  really  in  need  of 
a  curtain-raiser  with  a  part  for  a  certain  actress 
of  his  company;  he  fancied  that  we  could 
supply  him  with  the  desired  bibelot;  but  he 
wanted  it  at  once,  within  a  week.  Within  a 
week  my  partner  and  I  had  each  written  a  one- 
act  play,  and  in  less  than  a  fortnight  I  received 
a  third  invitation  to  discuss  coffee,  Turkish 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   123 

cigarettes,  and  plays.  The  manager  began  to 
talk  about  the  play  which  was  under  ray  own 
signature. 

"  Now,  what  is  your  idea  of  terms?  "  he  said, 
walking  to  and  fro. 

"Can  it  be  true,"  I  thought,  "that  I  have 
actually  sold  a  play  to  this  famous  manager?" 
In  a  moment  my  simple  old  ambitions  burst  like 
a  Roman  candle  into  innumerable  bright  stars. 
I  had  been  content  hitherto  with  the  prospect 
of  some  fame,  a  thousand  a  year,  and  a  few 
modest  luxuries.  But  I  knew  what  the  earnings 
of  successful  dramatists  were.  My  thousand 
increased  tenfold;  my  mind  dwelt  on  all  the 
complex  sybaritism  of  European  capitals;  and 
I  saw  how  I  could  make  use  of  the  unequalled 
advertisement  of  theatrical  renown  to  find  a 
ready  market  for  the  most  artistic  fiction  that  I 
was  capable  of  writing.  This  new  scheme  of 
things  sprang  into  my  brain  instantaneously, 
full-grown. 

I  left  the  theatre  an  accepted  dramatist. 

It  never  rains  but  it  pours.  My  kind  manager 
mentioned  our  stylistic  drawing-room  melo- 
drama to  another  manager  with  such  laudation 
that  the  second  manager  was  eager  to  see  it. 


i24   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

Having  seen  it,  he  was  eager  to  buy  it.  He  gave 
us  a  hundred  down  to  finish  it  in  three  months, 
and  when  we  had  finished  it  he  sealed  a  contract 
for  production  with  another  cheque  for  a  hun- 
dred. At  the  same  period,  through  the  media- 
tion of  the  friend  who  had  first  introduced  me 
to  this  world  where  hundreds  were  thrown 
about  like  fivers,  I  was  commissioned  by  the  most 
powerful  theatrical  manager  on  earth  to  assist 
in  the  dramatization  of  a  successful  novel;  and 
this  led  to  another  commission  of  a  similar 
nature,  on  more  remunerative  terms.  Then  a 
certain  management  telegraphed  for  me  (in  the 
theatre  all  business  is  done  by  telegraph  and 
cable),  and  offered  me  a  commission  to  com- 
press a  five-act  Old  English  comedy  into  three 
acts. 

"  We  might  have  offered  this  to  So-and-So  or 
So-and-So,"  they  said,  designating  persons  of 
importance.  "  But  we  preferred  to  come  to 
you." 

"  I  assume  my  name  is  to  appear?  "  I  said. 

But  my  name  was  not  to  appear,  and  I  begged 
to  be  allowed  to  decline  the  work. 

I  suddenly  found  myself  on  terms  of  famil- 
iarity with  some  of  the  great  ones  of  the  stage. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   125 

I  found  myself  invited  into  the  Garrick  Club, 
and  into  the  more  Bohemian  atmosphere  of  the 
Green  Room  Club.  I  became  accustomed  to 
hearing  the  phrase :  "  You  are  the  dramatist 
of  the  future."  One  afternoon  I  was  walking 
down  Bedford  Street  when  a  hand  was  placed 
on  my  shoulder,  and  a  voice  noted  for  its  rich 
and  beautiful  quality  exclaimed :  "  How  the 

d 1  are  you,  my  dear  chap?"  The  speaker 

bears  a  name  famous  throughout  the  English- 
speaking  world. 

"  You  are  arriving ! "  I  said  to  myself,  naively 
proud  of  this  greeting.  I  had  always  under- 
stood that  the  theatrical  "  ring "  was  impene- 
trable to  an  outsider ;  and  yet  I  had  stepped  into 
the  very  middle  of  it  without  the  least  trouble. 

My  collaborator  and  I  then  wrote  a  farce. 
"  We  can't  expect  to  sell  everything,"  I  said  to 
him  warningly,  but  I  sold  it  quite  easily.  In- 
deed I  sold  it,  repurchased  it,  and  sold  it  again, 
within  the  space  of  three  months. 

Reasons  of  discretion  prevent  me  from  carry- 
ing my  theatrical  record  beyond  this  point. 

I  have  not  spoken  of  the  artistic  side  of  this 
play-concoction,  because  it  scarcely  has  any. 
My  aim  in  writing  plays,  whether  alone  or  in 


126  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

collaboration,  has  always  been  strictly  commer- 
cial.* I  wanted  money  in  heaps,  and  I  wanted 
advertisement  for  my  books.  Here  and  there, 
in  the  comedies  and  farces  in  which  I  have  been 
concerned,  a  little  genuine  dramatic  art  has, 
I  fancy,  been  introduced;  but  surreptitiously, 
and  quite  unknown  to  the  managers.  I  have 
never  boasted  of  it  in  managerial  apartments. 
That  I  have  amused  myself  while  constructing 
these  arabesques  of  intrigue  and  epigram  is  in- 
dubitable, whether  to  my  credit  or  discredit  as 
a  serious  person.  I  laugh  constantly  in  writing 
a  farce.  I  have  found  it  far  easier  to  compose  a 
commercial  play  than  an  artistic  novel.  How 
our  princes  of  the  dramatic  kingdom  can  con- 
trive to  spend  two  years  over  a  single  piece,  as 
they  say  they  do,  I  cannot  imagine.  The  aver- 
age play  contains  from  eighteen  to  twenty 
thousand  words;  the  average  novel  contains 
eighty  thousand;  after  all,  writing  is  a  question 
of  words.  At  the  rate  of  a  thousand  words  a 
day,  one  could  write  a  play  three  times  over 
in  a  couple  of  months;  prefix  a  month — thirty 
solid  days  of  old  Time! — for  the  perfecting  of 
the  plot,  and  you  will  be  able  to  calculate  the 
*  Once  more  written  in  1900. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  127 

number  of  plays  producible  by  an  expert  crafts- 
man in  a  year.  And  unsuccessful  plays  are 
decidedly  more  remunerative  than  many  suc- 
cessful novels.  I  am  quite  certain  that  the  vast 
majority  of  failures  produced  in  the  West  End 
mean  to  their  authors  a  minimum  remuneration 
of  ten  pounds  per  thousand  words.  In  the 
fiction-mart  ten  pounds  per  thousand  is  gilded 
opulence.  I  am  neither  Sardou,  Sudermann,  nor 
George  R.  Sims,  but  I  know  what  I  am  talking 
about,  and  I  say  that  dramatic  composition  for 
the  market  is  child's  play  compared  to  the  writ- 
ing of  decent  average  fiction — provided  one  has 
an  instinct  for  stage  effect. 


XIV 

IT  cuts  me  to  the  heart  to  compare  English 
with  American  publishers  to  the  disadvan- 
tage, however  slight,  of  the  former;  but 
the  exigencies  of  a  truthful  narrative  demand 
from  me  this  sacrifice  of  personal  feeling  to 
the  god  in  "the  sleeping-car  emblematic  of 
British  enterprise."  The  representative  of  a 
great  American  firm  came  over  to  England  on 
a  mission  to  cultivate  personal  relations  with 
authors  of  repute  and  profitableness.  Among 
other  documents  of  a  similar  nature,  he  had  an 
introduction  to  myself;  I  was  not  an  author  of 
repute  and  profitableness,  but  I  was  decidedly 
in  the  movement  and  a  useful  sort  of  person  to 
know.  We  met  and  became  friends,  this  am- 
bassador and  I;  he  liked  my  work,  a  sure  ave- 
nue to  my  esteem ;  I  liked  his  genial  shrewdness. 
Shortly  afterwards,  there  appeared  in  a  certain 
paper  an  unsigned  article  dealing,  in  a  broad 
survey  alleged  to  be  masterly,  with  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  literary  market  during  the  last  thirty 

128 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   129 

years.  My  American  publisher  read  the  arti- 
cle— he  read  everything — and,  immediately  de- 
ciding in  his  own  mind  that  I  was  the  author 
of  it,  he  wrote  me  an  enthusiastic  letter  of  ap- 
preciation. He  had  not  been  deceived;  I  was 
the  author  of  the  article.  Within  the  next  few 
days  it  happened  that  he  encountered  an 
English  publisher  who  complained  that  he  could 
not  find  a  satisfactory  "  reader."  He  informed 
the  English  publisher  of  my  existence,  referred 
eulogistically  to  my  article,  and  gave  his  opinion 
that  I  was  precisely  the  man  whom  the  English 
publisher  needed.  The  English  publisher  had 
never  heard  of  me  (I  do  not  blame  him,  I 
merely  record),  but  he  was  so  moved  by  the 
American's  oration  that  he  invited  me  to  lunch 
at  his  club.  I  lunched  at  his  club,  in  a  discreet 
street  off  Piccadilly  (an  aged  and  a  sound 
wine!),  and  after  lunch,  my  host  drew  me  out 
to  talk  at  large  on  the  subject  of  authors,  pub- 
lishers, and  cash,  and  the  interplay  of  these 
three.  I  talked.  I  talked  for  a  very  long  while, 
enjoying  it.  The  experience  was  a  new  one  for 
me.  The  publisher  did  not  agree  with  all  that 
I  said,  but  he  agreed  with  a  good  deal  of  it, 
and  at  the  close  of  the  somewhat  exhausting 


130   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

assize,  in  which  between  us  we  had  judged  the 
value  of  nearly  every  literary  reputation  in 
England,  he  offered  me  the  post  of  principal 
reader  to  his  firm,  and  I  accepted  it. 

It  is,  I  believe,  an  historical  fact  that  authors 
seldom  attend  the  funeral  of  a  publisher's  reader. 
They  approve  the  sepulture,  but  do  not,  save 
sometimes  in  a  spirit  of  ferocious  humour,  lend 
to  the  procession  the  dignity  of  their  massive 
figures.  Nevertheless,  the  publisher's  reader  is 
the  most  benevolent  person  on  earth.  He  is  so 
perforce.  He  may  begin  his  labours  in  the 
slaughterous  vein  of  the  "Saturday  Review"; 
but  time  and  the  extraordinary  level  mediocrity 
of  manuscripts  soon  cure  him  of  any  such  ten- 
dency. He  comes  to  refuse  but  remains  to  ac- 
cept. He  must  accept  something— or  where  is 
the  justification  of  his  existence?  Often,  after 
a  prolonged  run  of  bad  manuscripts,  I  have  said 
to  myself :  "  If  I  don't  get  a  chance  to  recom- 
mend something  soon  I  shall  be  asked  to  re- 
sign." I  long  to  look  on  a  manuscript  and  say 
that  it  is  good,  or  that  there  are  golden  sov- 
ereigns between  the  lines.  Instead  of  search- 
ing for  faults  I  search  for  hidden  excellences. 
No  author  ever  had  a  more  lenient  audience 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  131 

than  I.  If  the  author  would  only  believe  it,  I 
want,  I  actually  desire,  to  be  favourably  im- 
pressed by  his  work.  When  I  open  the  parcel 
of  typescript  I  beam  on  it  with  kindly  eyes,  and 
I  think:  "Perhaps  there  is  something  really 
good  here";  and  in  that  state  of  mind  I  com- 
mence the  perusal.  But  there  never  is  anything 
really  good  there.  In  an  experience  not  vast, 
but  extending  over  some  years,  only  one  book 
with  even  a  touch  of  genius  has  passed  through 
my  hands;  that  book  was  so  faulty  and  so 
wilfully  wild,  that  I  could  not  unreservedly 
advise  its  publication  and  my  firm  declined  it;  I 
do  not  think  that  the  book  has  been  issued  else- 
where. I  have  "discovered"  only  two  authors 
of  talent;  one  of  these  is  very  slowly  achieving 
a  reputation;  of  the  other  I  have  heard  nothing 
since  his  first  book,  which  resulted  in  a  financial 
loss.  Time  and  increasing  knowledge  of  the 
two  facts  have  dissipated  for  me  the  melan- 
choly and  affecting  legend  of  literary  talent 
going  a-begging  because  of  the  indifference  of 
publishers.  O  young  author  of  talent,  would 
that  I  could  find  you  and  make  you  understand 
how  the  publisher  yearns  for  you  as  the  lover 
for  his  love!  Qua.  publisher's  reader,  I  am  a 


I32   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

sad  man,  a  man  confirmed  in  disappointment, 
a  man  in  whom  the  phenomenon  of  continued 
hope  is  almost  irrational.  When  I  look  back 
along  the  frightful  vista  of  dull  manuscripts  that 
I  have  refused  or  accepted,  I  tremble  for  the 
future  of  English  literature  (or  should  tremble, 
did  I  not  infallibly  know  that  the  future  of 
English  literature  is  perfectly  safe  after  all) ! 
And  yet  I  have  by  no  means  drunk  the  worst 
of  the  cup  of  mediocrity.  The  watery  milk  of 
the  manuscripts  sent  to  my  employer  has  always 
been  skimmed  for  me  by  others;  I  have  had 
only  the  cream  to  savour.  I  am  asked  some- 
times why  publishers  publish  so  many  bad 
books;  and  my  reply  is:  "Because  they  can't 
get  better."  And  this  is  a  profound  truth  sol- 
emnly enunciated. 

People  have  said  to  me:  "Bui  you.  are  so 
critical;  you  condemn  eberyihing."  Such  is 
the  complaint  of  the  laity  against  the  initiate, 
against  the  person  who  has  diligently  practised 
the  cultivation  of  his  taste.  And,  roughly 
speaking,  it  is  a  well-founded  and  excusable 
complaint.  The  person  of  fine  taste  does  con- 
demn nearly  everything.  He  takes  his  pleasure 
in  a  number  of  books  so  limited  as  to  be  al- 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  133 

most  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  total  mass 
of  production.  Out  of  two  thousand  novels 
issued  in  a  year,  he  may  really  enjoy  half-a- 
dozen  at  the  outside.  And  the  one  thousand 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-four  he  lumps  together 
in  a  wholesale  contempt  which  draws  no  dis- 
tinctions. This  is  right.  This  contributes  to 
the  preservation  of  a  high  standard.  But  the 
laity  will  never  be  persuaded  that  it  is  just* 
The  point  I  wish  to  make,  however,  is  that  when 
I  sit  down  to  read  for  my  publisher  I  first  of  all 
forget  my  literary  exclusiveness.  I  sink  the 
aesthetic  aristocrat  and  become  a  plain  man. 
By  a  deliberate  act  of  imagination,  I  put  myself 
in  the  place,  not  of  the  typical  average  reader 
— for  there  is  no  such  person — but  of  a  com- 
posite of  the  various  genera  of  average  reader 
known  to  publishing  science.  I  am  that  com- 
posite for  the  time;  and,  being  so,  I  remain 
quiescent  and  allow ,  the  book  to  produce  its 
own  effect  on  me.  I  employ  no  canons,  rules, 
measures.  Does  the  book  bore  me — that  con- 
demns it.  Does  it  interest  me,  ever  so  slightly 
— that  is  enough  to  entitle  it  to  further  consid- 
eration. When  I  have  decided  that  it  interests 
the  imaginary  composite  whom  I  represent,  then 


134   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

I  become  myself  again,  and  proceed  scientifically 
to  enquire  why  it  has  interested,  and  why  it  has 
not  interested  more  intensely ;  I  proceed  to  cata- 
logue its  good  and  bad  qualities,  to  calculate 
its  chances,  to  assay  its  monetary  worth. 

The  first  gift  of  a  publisher's  reader  should 
be  imagination;  without  imagination,  the  power 
to  put  himself  in  a  position  in  which  actually 
he  is  not,  fine  taste  is  useless — indeed,  it  is  worse 
than  useless.  The  ideal  publisher's  reader 
should  have  two  perfections — perfect  taste  and 
perfect  knowledge  of  what  the  various  kinds  of 
other  people  deem  to  be  taste.  Such  qualifica- 
tions, even  in  a  form  far  from  perfect,  are  rare.  A 
man  is  born  with  them ;  though  they  may  be  culti- 
vated, they  cannot  either  of  them  be  acquired. 
The  remuneration  of  the  publisher's  reader 
ought,  therefore,  to  be  high,  lavish,  princely.  It 
it  not.  It  has  nothing  approaching  these  char- 
acteristics. Instead  of  being  regarded  as  the 
ultimate  seat  of  directing  energy,  the  brain  within 
the  publisher's  brain,  the  reader  often  exists  as 
a  sort  of  offshoot,  an  accident,  an  external 
mechanism  which  must  be  employed  because  it 
is  the  custom  to  employ  it.  As  one  reflects  upon 
the  experience  and  judgment  which  readers  must 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  135 

possess,  the  responsibility  which  weighs  on  them, 
and  the  brooding  hypochondriasis  engendered 
by  their  mysterious  calling,  one  wonders  that 
their  salaries  do  not  enable  them  to  reside  in 
Park  Lane  or  Carlton  House  Terrace.  The 
truth  is,  that  they  exist  precariously  in  Walham 
Green,  Camberwell,  or  out  in  the  country  where 
rents  are  low. 

I  have  had  no  piquant  adventures  as  a  pub- 
lisher's reader.  The  vocation  fails  in  piquancy: 
that  is  precisely  where  it  does  fail.  Occasion- 
ally when  a  manuscript  comes  from  some 
established  author  who  has  been  deemed  the 
private  property  of  another  house,  there  is  the 
excitement  of  discovering  from  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  the  manuscript,  or  from  the  circumstan- 
tial evidence  of  public  facts  carefully  collated, 
just  why  that  manuscript  has  been  offered  to 
my  employer;  and  the  discovered  reason  is  al- 
ways either  amusing  or  shameful.  But  such 
excitements  are  rare,  and  not  very  thrilling  after 
all.  No!  Reading  for  a  publisher  does  not  fos- 
ter the  joy  of  life.  I  have  never  done  it  with 
enthusiasm;  and,  frankly,  I  continue  to  do  it 
more  from  habit  than  from  inclination.  One 
learns  too  much  in  the  role.  The  gilt  is  off  the 


136  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

gingerbread,  and  the  bloom  is  off  the  rye,  for  a 
publisher's  reader.  The  statistics  of  circulations 
are  before  him;  and  no  one  who  is  aware  of  the 
actual  figures  which  literary  advertisements  are 
notoriously  designed  to  conceal  can  be  called 
happy  until  he  is  dead. 


XV 

WEN  I  had  been  in  London  a  decade, 
'.  stood  aside  from  myself  and  re- 
/iewed  my  situation  with  the  god- 
like and  detached  impartiality  of  a  trained  artistic 
observer.  And  what  I  saw  was  a  young  man 
who  pre-eminently  knew  his  way  about,  and 
who  was  apt  to  be  rather  too  complacent  over 
this  fact;  a  young  man  with  some  brilliance 
but  far  more  shrewdness;  a  young  man  with  a 
highly  developed  faculty  for  making  a  little  go 
a  long  way;  a  young  man  who  was  accustomed 
to  be  listened  to  when  he  thought  fit  to  speak, 
and  who  was  decidedly  more  inclined  to  settle 
questions  than  to  raise  them. 

This  young  man  hac^  invaded  the  town  as  a 
clerk  at  twenty-five  shillings  a  week,  paying  six 
shillings  a  week  for  a  bed-sitting  room,  three- 
pence for  his  breakfast,  and  sixpence  for  his  veg- 
etarian dinner.  The  curtain  falls  on  the 
prologue.  Ten  years  elapse.  The  curtain  rises 
on  the  figure  of  an  editor,  novelist,  dramatist, 
137 


i38   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

critic,  connoisseur  of  all  arts.  See  him  in  his 
suburban  residence,  with  its  poplar-shaded  gar- 
den, its  bicycle-house  at  the  extremity  thereof, 
and  its  horizon  composed  of  the  District  Rail- 
way Line.  See  the  study,  lined  with  two  thou- 
sand books,  garnished  with  photogravures,  and 
furnished  with  a  writing-bureau  and  a  chair  and 
nothing  else.  See  the  drawing-room  with  its 
artistic  wall-paper,  its  Kelmscotts,  its  water- 
colours  of  a  pallid  but  indubitable  distinction,  its 
grand  piano  on  which  are  a  Wagnerian  score  and 
Bach's  Two-part  Inventions.  See  the  bachelor's 
bedroom,  so  austere  and  precise,  wherein  Bos- 
well's  "  Johnson  "  and  Baudelaire's  "  Fleurs  du 
Mai  "  exist  peaceably  together  on  the  night-table. 
The  entire  machine  speaks  with  one  voice,  and  it 
tells  you  that  there  are  no  flies  on  that  young 
man,  that  that  young  man  never  gives  the  wrong 
change.  He  is  in  the  movement,  he  is  correct; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  is  not  so  simple  as  not 
to  smile  with  contemptuous  toleration  at  all 
movements  and  all  correctness.  He  knows.  He 
is  a  complete  guide  to  art  and  life.  His  innocent 
foible  is  never  to  be  at  a  loss,  and  never  to  be 
carried  away — save  now  and  then,  because  an 
occasional  ecstasy  is  good  for  the  soul.  His 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   139 

knowledge  of  the  coulisses  of  the  various  arts 
is  wonderful.  He  numbers  painters,  sculptors, 
musicians,  architects,  among  his  intimate  friends ; 
and  no  artistic  manifestation  can  possibly  occur 
that  he  is  unable  within  twenty-four  hours  to 
assess  at  its  true  value.  He  is  terrible  against 
cabotins,  no  matter  where  he  finds  them,  and  this 
seems  to  be  his  hobby:  to  expose  cabotins. 

He  is  a  young  man  of  method ;  young  men  do 
not  arrive  without  method  at  the  condition  of 
being  encyclopaedias;  his  watch  is  as  correct  as 
his  judgments.  He  breakfasts  at  eight  sharp, 
and  his  housekeeper  sets  the  kitchen  clock  five 
minutes  fast,  for  he  is  a  terrible  Ivan  at  breakfast. 
He  glances  at  a  couple  of  newspapers,  first  at 
the  list  of  "publications  received,"  and  then  at 
the  news.  Of  course  he  is  not  hoodwinked  by 
newspapers.  He  will  meet  the  foreign  editor  of 

the  "  Daily "  at  lunch  and  will  learn  the  true 

inwardness  of  that  exploded  canard  from  Berlin. 
Having  assessed  the  newspapers,  he  may  inter- 
pret to  his  own  satisfaction  a  movement  from  a 
Mozart  piano  sonata,  and  then  he  will  brush  his 
hat,  pick  up  sundry  books,  and  pass  sedately 
to  the  station.  The  station-master  is  respect- 
fully cordial,  and  quite  ready  to  explain  to  him 


140 

the  secret  causation  of  delays,  for  his  season- 
ticket  is  a  white  one.  He  gets  into  a  compart- 
ment with  a  stockbroker,  a  lawyer,  or  a  tea- 
merchant,  and  immediately  falls  to  work;  he 
does  his  minor  reviewing  in  the  train,  fostering 
or  annihilating  reputations  while  the  antique  en- 
gine burrows  beneath  the  squares  of  the  West 
End;  but  his  brain  is  not  so  fully  occupied  that 
he  cannot  spare  a  corner  of  it  to  meditate  upon 
the  extraordinary  ignorance  and  simplicity  of 
stockbrokers,  lawyers,  and  tea-merchants.  He 
reaches  his  office,  and  for  two  or  three  hours 
practises  that  occupation  of  watching  other  peo- 
ple work  which  is  called  editing:  a  process 
always  of  ordering,  of  rectifying,  of  laying  down 
the  law,  of  being  looked  up  to,  of  showing  how 
a  thing  ought  to  be  done  and  can  be  done,  of 
being  flattered  and  cajoled,  of  dispensing  joy  or 
gloom — in  short,  the  Jupiter  and  Shah  of  Persia 
business.  He  then  departs,  as  to  church,  to  his 
grill-room,  where  for  a  few  moments  himself  and 
the  cook  hold  an  anxious  consultation  to  decide 
.which  particular  chop  or  which  particular  steak 
out  of  a  mass  of  chops  and  steaks  shall  have  the 
honour  of  sustaining  him  till  tea-time.  The 
place  is  full  of  literary  shahs  and  those  about  to 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   141 

be  shahs.  They  are  all  in  the  movement;  they 
constitute  the  movement.  They  ride  the  comic- 
opera  whirlwinds  of  public  opinion  and  direct 
the  tea-cup  storms  of  popularity.  The  young 
man  classes  most  of  them  with  the  stockbroker, 
the  lawyer,  and  the  tea-merchant.  With  a  few 
he  fraternises,  and  these  few  save  their  faces 
by  appreciating  the  humour  of  the  thing.  Soon 
afterwards  he  goes  home,  digging  en  route  the 
graves  of  more  reputations,  and,  surrounded  by 
the  two  thousand  volumes,  he  works  in  seclusion 
at  his  various  activities  that  he  may  triumph 
openly.  He  descends  to  dinner  stating  that  he 
has  written  so  many  thousand  words,  and  excel- 
lent words  too — stylistic,  dramatic,  tender,  witty. 
There  may  be  a  theatrical  first-night  toward,  in 
which  case  he  returns  to  town  and  sits  in  the 
seat  of  the  languid  for  a  space.  Or  he  stays 
within  doors  and  discusses  with  excessively  so- 
phisticated friends  the  longevity  of  illusions  in 
ordinary  people.  At  length  he  retires  and  reads 
himself  to  sleep.  His  last  thoughts  are  the  long, 
long  thoughts  of  his  perfect  taste  and  tireless 
industry,  and  of  the  aesthetic  darkness  which 
covers  the  earth.  .  .  . 

Such  was  the  young  man  I  inimically  beheld. 


i42   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

And  I  was  not  satisfied  with  him.  He  was  gor- 
geous, but  not  sufficiently  gorgeous.  He  had 
done  much  in  ten  years,  and  I  excused 
his  facile  pride,  but  he  had  not  done  enough. 
The  curtain  had  risen  on  the  first  act 
of  the  drama  of  life,  but  the  action,  the  intrigue, 
the  passion  seemed  to  hesitate  and  halt.  Was 
this  the  artistic  and  creative  life,  this  daily 
round?  Was  this  the  reality  of  that  which  I 
had  dreamed?  Where  was  the  sense  of  romance, 
the  consciousness  of  felicity?  I  felt  that  I  had 
slipped  into  a  groove  which  wore  deeper  every 
day.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  fettered  and 
tied  down.  I  had  grown  weary  of  journalism. 
The  necessity  of  being  at  a  certain  place  at  a 
certain  hour  on  so  many  days  of  the  week  grew 
irksome  to  me;  I  regarded  it  as  invasive  of  my 
rights  as  a  freeborn  Englishman,  as  shameful  and 
scarcely  tolerable.  Was  I  a  horse  that  I  should 
be  ridden  on  the  curb  by  a  Board  of  Directors? 
I  objected  to  the  theory  of  proprietors.  The  oc- 
casional conferences  with  the  Board,  though 
conducted  with  all  the  ritual  of  an  extreme  punc- 
tilio, were  an  indignity.  The  suave  requests  of 

the  chairman:    "Will  you  kindly  tell  us ?" 

And  my  defensive  replies,  and  then  the  dismissal : 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   143 

"Thank  you,  Mr. ,  I  think  we  need  trouble 

you  no  further  this  morning."  And  my  exit, 
irritated  by  the  thought  that  I  was  about  to  be 
discussed  with  the  freedom  that  Boards  in  con- 
clave permit  themselves.  It  was  as  bad  as  being 
bullied  by  London  University  at  an  examination. 
I  longed  to  tell  this  Board,  with  whom  I  was 
so  amicable  on  unofficial  occasions,  that  they 
were  using  a  razor  to  cut  firewood.  I  longed  to 
tell  them  that  the  nursing  of  their  excellent  and 
precious  organ  was  seriously  interfering  with  the 
composition  of  great  works  and  the  manufacture 
of  a  dazzling  reputation.  I  longed  to  point  out 
to  them  that  the  time  would  come  when  they 
would  mention  to  their  friends  with  elaborate 
casualness  and  covert  pride  that  they  had  once 
employed  me,  the  unique  me,  at  a  salary  meas- 
urable in  hundreds. 

Further,  I  was  ill-pleased  with  literary  Lon- 
don. "  You  have  a  literary  life  here,'y  an 
American  editor  once  said  to  me.  "There  is  a 
literary  circle,  an  atmosphere.  .  .  .  We  have  no 
such  thing  in  New  York."  I  answered  that  no 
doubt  we  had;  but  I  spoke  without  enthusiasm. 
I  suppose  that  if  any  one  "  moved  in  literary 
circles,"  I  did,  then.  Yet  I  derived  small  satis- 


i44   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

faction  from  my  inclusion  within  those  circum- 
ferences. To  me  there  was  a  lack  of  ozone  in  the 
atmosphere  which  the  American  editor  found  so 
invigorating.  Be  it  understood  that  when  I  say 
"literary  circles,"  I  do  not  in  the  least  mean 
genteel  Bohemia,  the  world  of  informal  At- 
Homes  that  are  all  formality,  where  the  little 
lions  growl  on  their  chains  in  a  row  against  a 
drawing-room  wall,  and  the  hostess  congratu- 
lates herself  that  every  single  captive  in  the 
salon  has  "done  something."  Such  polite  rack- 
etting,  such  discreet  orgies  of  the  higher  intel- 
lectuality, may  suit  the  elegant  triflers,  the 
authors  of  monographs  on  Velasquez,  golf, 
Dante,  asparagus,  royalties,  ping-pong,  and  Em- 
pire; but  the  business  men  who  write  from  ten 
to  fifty  thousands  words  a  week  without  chatter- 
ing about  it,  have  no  use  for  the  literary 
menagerie.  I  lived  among  the  real  business  men 
— and  even  so  I  was  dissatisfied.  I  believe  too 
that  they  were  dissatisfied,  most  of  them.  There 
is  an  infection  in  the  air  of  London,  a  zymotic 
influence  which  is  the  mysterious  cause  of  un- 
naturalness,  pose,  affectation,  artificiality,  moral 
neuritis,  and  satiety.  One  loses  grasp  of  the 
essentials  in  an  undue  preoccupation  with  the 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   145 

vacuities  which  society  has  invented.  The  dis- 
tractions are  too  multiform.  One  never  gets  a 
chance  to  talk  common-sense  with  one's  soul. 

Thirdly,  the  rate  at  which  I  was  making  head- 
way did  not  please  me.  My  reputation  was 
growing,  but  only  like  a  coral-reef.  Many  peo- 
ple had  an  eye  on  me,  as  on  one  for  whom  the 
future  held  big  things.  Many  people  took  care 
to  read  almost  all  that  I  wrote.  But  my  name 
had  no  significance  for  the  general  public.  The 
mention  of  my  name  would  have  brought  no 
recognizing  smile  to  the  average  person  who  is 
"  fond  of  reading.'*  I  wanted  to  do  something 
large,  arresting,  and  decisive.  And  I  saw  no 
chance  of  doing  this.  I  had  too  many  irons  in 
the  fire.  I  was  frittering  myself  away  in  a  mul- 
titude of  diverse  activities  of  the  pen. 

I  pondered  upon  these  considerations  for  a 
long  while.  I  saw  only  one  way  out,  and,  at 
last,  circumstances  appearing  to  conspire  to  lead 
me  into  that  way,  I  wrote  a  letter  to  my  Board 
of  Directors  and  resigned  my  editorial  post.  I 
had  decided  to  abandon  London,  that  delectable 
paradise  of  my  youthful  desires.  A  To-let  notice 
flourished  suddenly  in  my  front-garden,  and  my 
world  became  aware  that  I  was  going  to  desert 


146   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

it.  The  majority  thought  me  rash  and  unwise, 
and  predicted  an  ignominious  return  to  Fleet 
Street.  But  the  minority  upheld  my  resolution. 
I  reached  down  a  map  of  England,  and  said  that 
I  must  live  on  a  certain  main-line  at  a  certain 
minimum  distance  from  London.  This  fixed  the 
neighbourhood  of  my  future  home.  The  next 
thing  was  to  find  that  home,  and  with  the 
aid  of  friends  and  a  bicycle  I  soon  found  it.  One 
fine  wet  day  I  stole  out  of  London  in  a  new 
quest  of  romance.  No  one  seemed  to  be  funda- 
mentally disturbed  over  my  exodus.  I  remarked 
to  myself :  "  Either  you  are  a  far-seeing  and 
bold  fellow,  or  you  are  a  fool.  Time  will  show 
which."  And  that  night  I  slept,  or  failed  to 
sleep,  in  a  house  that  was  half  a  mile  from  the 
next  house,  three  miles  from  a  station,  and  three 
miles  from  a  town.  I  had  left  the  haunts  of 
men  with  a  vengeance,  and  incidentally  I  had 
left  a  regular  income. 

I  ran  over  the  list  of  our  foremost  writers: 
they  nearly  all  lived  in  the  country. 


XVI 

WHEN  I  had  settled  down  into  the 
landscape,  bought  my  live-stock, 
studied  manuals  on  horses,  riding, 
driving,  hunting,  dogs,  poultry,  and  wildflowers, 
learned  to  distinguish  between  wheat  and  barley 
and  between  a  six-year-old  and  an  aged  screw, 
shot  a  sparrow  on  the  fence  only  to  find  it  was  a 
redbreast,  drunk  the  cherry-brandy  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan inn,  played  in  the  village  cricket  team, 
and  ceased  to  feel  self-conscious  in  riding- 
breeches,,  I  perceived  with  absolute  certainty 
that  I  had  made  no  error ;  I  knew  that,  come  pov- 
erty or  the  riches  of  Indian  short  stories,  I  should 
never  again  live  permanently  in  London.  I  ex- 
panded, and  in  my  expansion  I  felt  rather  sorry 
for  Londoners.  I  perceived,  too,  that  the  coun- 
try possessed  commercial  advantages  which  I 
had  failed  to  appreciate  before.  When  you  live 
two  and  a  half  miles  from  a  railway  you  can 
cut  a  dash  on  an  income  which  in  London  spells 
omnibus  instead  of  cab.  For  myself  I  have 
147 


148   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

a  profound  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  cutting  a 
dash.  You  invite  an  influential  friend  down  for 
the  week-end.  You  meet  him  at  the  station  with 
a  nice  little  grey  mare  in  a  phaeton,  and  an 
unimpeachable  Dalmatian  running  behind.  The 
turn-out  is  nothing  alone,  but  the  pedigree 
printed  in  the  pinkiness  of  that  dog's  chaps  and 
in  the  exiguity  of  his  tail,  spotted  to  the  last 
inch,  would  give  tone  to  a  coster's  cart.  You 
see  that  your  influential  friend  wishes  to  com- 
ment, but  as  you  gather  up  the  reins  you  care- 
fully begin  to  talk  about  the  weather  and  prices 
per  thousand.  You  rush  him  home  in  twelve 
minutes,  skimming  gate  posts.  On  Monday 
morning,  purposely  running  it  fine,  you  hurry 
him  into  a  dog-cart  behind  a  brown  cob  fresh 
from  a  pottle  of  beans,  and  you  whirl  him  back 
to  the  station  in  ten  minutes,  up-hill  half  the 
way.  You  fling  him  into  the  train,  with  ten 
seconds  to  spare.  "This  is  how  we  do  it  in 
these  parts,"  your  studiously  nonchalant  face 
says  to  him.  He  thinks.  In  a  few  hours  Fleet 
Street  becomes  aware  that  young  So-and-so,  who 
lately  buried  himself  m  the  country,  is  alive  and 
lusty.  Your  stock  rises.  You  go  up  one.  You 
extort  respect.  You  are  ticketed  in  the  retentive 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   149 

brains  of  literary  shahs  as  a  success.    And  you 
still  have  the  dog  left  for  another  day. 

In  the  country  there  is  plenty  of  space  and 
plenty  of  time,  and  no  damnable  fixed  relation 
between  these  two;  in  other  words,  a  particular 
hour  does  not  imply  a  particular  spot  for  you, 
and  this  is  something  to  an  author.  I  found  my 
days  succeeding  each  other  with  a  leisurely  and 
adorable  monotony.  I  lingered  over  breakfast 
like  a  lord,  perusing  the  previous  evening's  pa- 
pers with  as  much  gusto  as  though  they  were 
hot  from  the  press.  I  looked  sideways  at  my 
work,  with  a  non-committal  air,  as  if  saying :  "  I 
may  do  you  or  I  may  not.  I  shall  see  how  I 
feel.'*  I  went  out  for  a  walk,  followed  by  dogs 
less  spectacular  than  the  Dalmatian,  to  collect 
ideas.  I  had  nothing  to  think  about  but  my 
own  direct  productiveness.  I  stopped  to  ex- 
amine the  progress  of  trees,  to  discuss  meteor- 
ology with  roadmenders,  to  wonder  why  lambs 
always  waggled  theif  tails  during  the  act  of 
taking  sustenance.  All  was  calmness,  serenity. 
The  embryo  of  the  article  or  the  chapter  faintly 
adumbrated  itself  in  my  mind,  assumed  a  form. 
One  idea,  then  another ;  then  an  altercation  with 
the  dogs,  ending  in  castigation,  disillusion,  and 


i5o   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

pessimism  for  them.  Suddenly  I  exclaimed: 
"  I  think  I've  got  enough  to  go  on  with !  "  And 
I  turned  back  homewards.  I  reached  my  study 
and  sat  down.  From  my  windows  I  beheld  a 
magnificent  panorama  of  hills.  Now  the  con- 
templation of  hills  is  uplifting  to  the  soul;  it 
leads  to  inspiration  and  induces  nobility  of  char- 
acter, but  it  has  a  tendency  to  interfere  with 
actual  composition.  I  stared  long  at  those  hills. 
Should  I  work,  should  I  not  work?  A  brief 
period  always  ensued  when  the  odds  were  tre- 
mendous against  any  work  being  done  that  day. 
Then  I  seized  the  pen  and  wrote  the  title.  Then 
another  dreadful  and  disconcerting  pause,  all 
ideas  having  scuttled  away  like  mice  to  their 
holes.  Well,  I  must  put  something  down,  how- 
ever ridiculous.  I  wrote  a  sentence,  feeling  first 
that  it  would  not  serve  and  then  that  it  would 
have  to  serve,  anyway.  I  glanced  at  the  clock. 
Ten  twenty-five!  I  watched  the  clock  in  a  sort 
of  hypnotism  that  authors  know  of,  till  it  showed 
ten-thirty.  Then  with  a  horrible  wrench  I 
put  the  pen  in  the  ink  again  ....  Jove! 
Eleven  forty-five,  and  I  had  written  seven  hun- 
dred words.  Not  bad  stuff  that!  Indeed,  very 
good!  Time  for  a  cigarette  and  a  stroll  round 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR   151 

to  hear  wisdom  from  the  gardener.  I  resumed 
at  twelve,  and  then  in  about  two  minutes  it  was 
one  o'clock  and  lunch  time.  After  lunch,  rest 
for  the  weary  and  the  digesting;  slumber;  an- 
other stroll.  Arrival  of  the  second  post  on  a 
Russian  pony  that  cost  fifty  shillings.  Tea,  and 
perusal  of  the  morning  paper.  Then  another 
spell  of  work,  and  the  day  was  gone,  vanished, 
distilled  away.  And  about  five  days  made  a 
week,  and  forty-eight  weeks  a  year. 

No  newspaper-proprietors,  contributors,  circu- 
lations, placards,  tape-machines,  theatres,  operas, 
concerts,  picture-galleries,  clubs,  restaurants, 
parties,  Undergrounds!  Nothing  artificial,  ex- 
cept myself  and  my  work!  And  nothing,  save 
the  fear  of  rent-day,  to  come  between  myself  and 
my  work! 

It  was  dull,  you  will  tell  me.  But  I  tell  you 
it  was  magnificent.  Monotony,  solitude,  are 
essential  to  the  full  activity  of  the  artist.  Just 
as  a  horse  is  seen  best  when  coursing  alone  over 
a  great  plain,  so  the  fierce  and  callous  egotism 
of  the  artist  comes  to  its  perfection  in  a  vast 
expanse  of  custom,  leisure,  and  apparently  vacu- 
ous reverie.  To  insist  on  forgetting  his  work, 
to  keep  his  mind  a  blank  until  the  work,  no 


i52   THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

longer  to  be  held  in  check,  rushes  into  that  empti- 
ness and  fills  it  up— that  is  one  of  the  secrets 
of  imaginative  creation.  Of  course  it  is  not  a 
recipe  for  every  artist.  I  have  known  artists, 
and  genuine  ones,  who  could  keep  their  minds 
empty  and  suck  in  the  beauty  of  the  world  for 
evermore  without  the  slightest  difficulty;  who 
only  wrote,  as  the  early  Britons  hunted,  when 
they  were  hungry  and  there  was  nothing  in  the 
pot.  But  I  was  not  of  that  species.  On  the 
contrary,  the  incurable  habit  of  industry,  the 
itch  for  the  pen,  was  my  chiefest  curse.  To  be 
unproductive  for  more  than  a  couple  of  days  or 
so  was  to  be  miserable.  Like  most  writers  I 
was  frequently  the  victim  of  an  illogical,  inde- 
fensible and  causeless  melancholy;  but  one  kind 
of  melancholy  could  always  be  explained,  and 
that  was  the  melancholy  of  idleness.  I  could 
never  divert  myself  with  hobbies.  I  did  not  read 
much,  except  in  the  way  of  business.  Two 
hours  reading,  even  of  Turgenev  or  Balzac  or 
Montaigne,  wearied  me  out.  An  author  once 
remarked  to  me :  "  /  knofo  enough.  I  don't  read 
books,  I  write  *em."  It  was  a  haughty  and  arro- 
gant saying,  but  there  is  a  sense  in  which  it  was 
true.  Often  I  have  felt  like  that :  "  I  know 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR  153 

enough,  I  feel  enough.  If  my  future  is  as  long  as 
my  past,  I  shall  still  not  be  able  to  put  down  the 
tenth  part  of  what  I  have  already  acquired."  The 
consciousness  of  this,  of  what  an  extraordinary 
and  wonderful  museum  of  perceptions  and  emo- 
tions my  brain  was,  sustained  me  many  a  time 
against  the  chagrins,  the  delays,  and  the  defeats 
of  the  artistic  career.  Often  have  I  said  inwardly : 
"  World,  when  I  talk  with  you,  dine  with  you, 
wrangle  with  you,  love  you,  and  hate  you,  I 
condescend !  "  Every  artist  has  said  that.  Peo- 
ple call  it  conceit;  people  may  call  it  what  they 
please.  One  of  the  greatest  things  a  great  man 
said,  is: — 

I  know  I  am  august 

I  do  not  trouble  my  spirit  to  indicate  itself  or  to  be 

understood.  .  .  . 
I  exist  as  I  am,  that  is  enough. 
If  no  other  in  the  world  be  aware  I  sit  content. 
And  if  each  and  all  be- aware  I  sit  content. 

Nevertheless,  for  me,  the  contentment  of  the 
ultimate  line  surpassed  the  contentment  of  the 
penultimate.  And  therefore  it  was,  perhaps,  that 
I  descended  on  London  from  time  to  time  like 
a  wolf  on  the  fold,  and  made  the  world  aware, 
and  snatched  its  feverish  joys  for  a  space,  and 


154  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  AN  AUTHOR 

then,  surfeited  and  advertised,  went  back  and 
relapsed  into  my  long  monotony.  And  some- 
times I  would  suddenly  halt  and  address  myself: 

"  You  may  be  richer  or  you  may  be  poorer ; 
you  may  live  in  greater  pomp  and  luxury,  or 
in  less.  The  point  is  that  you  will  always  be, 
essentially,  what  you  are  now.  You  have  no 
real  satisfaction  to  look  forward  to  except  the 
satisfaction  of  continually  inventing,  fancying, 
imagining,  scribbling.  Say  another  thirty  years 
of  these  emotional  ingenuities,  these  intermi- 
nable variations  on  the  theme  of  beauty.  Is  it 
good  enough?" 

And  I  answered:    Yes. 

But  who  knows?  Who  can  preclude  the  re- 
grets of  the  dying  couch? 


THE  ENB 


—       a 


RETURN 
TO—  ^                               COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  UCLA 

OAN  PERIOD  1 

2 

3 

5 

6 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES,  CA.  9002 


L  005  659  293  4 


3 


'  1 

UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  110475     9 


